The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About
the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas
for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.

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AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I cannot let these volumes go to press without some
grateful word to you who have helped me during the
six years and more that have gone to their making.

First, I want to confess how I have envied you your
association with Mark Twain in those days when you
and he “went gipsying, a long time ago.”
Next, I want to express my wonder at your willingness
to give me so unstintedly from your precious letters
and memories, when it is in the nature of man to hoard
such treasures, for himself and for those who follow
him. And, lastly, I want to tell you that I do
not envy you so much, any more, for in these chapters,
one after another, through your grace, I have gone
gipsying with you all. Neither do I wonder now,
for I have come to know that out of your love for
him grew that greater unselfishness (or divine selfishness,
as he himself might have termed it), and that nothing
short of the fullest you could do for his memory would
have contented your hearts.

My gratitude is measureless; and it is world-wide,
for there is no land so distant that it does not contain
some one who has eagerly contributed to the story.
Only, I seem so poorly able to put my thanks into words.

Albert Bigelow Paine.

Prefatorynote

Certain happenings as recorded in this work will be
found to differ materially from the same incidents
and episodes as set down in the writings of Mr. Clemens
himself. Mark Twain’s spirit was built of
the very fabric of truth, so far as moral intent was
concerned, but in his earlier autobiographical writings—­and
most of his earlier writings were autobiographical—­he
made no real pretense to accuracy of time, place, or
circumstance—­seeking, as he said, “only
to tell a good story”—­while in later
years an ever-vivid imagination and a capricious memory
made history difficult, even when, as in his so-called
“Autobiography,” his effort was in the
direction of fact.

“When I was younger I could remember anything,
whether it happened or not,” he once said, quaintly,
“but I am getting old, and soon I shall remember
only the latter.”

The reader may be assured, where discrepancies occur,
that the writer of this memoir has obtained his data
from direct and positive sources: letters, diaries,
account-books, or other immediate memoranda; also from
the concurring testimony of eye-witnesses, supported
by a unity of circumstance and conditions, and not
from hearsay or vagrant printed items.

Page 2

Marktwain

A biography
Iancestors

On page 492 of the old volume of Suetonius, which
Mark Twain read until his very last day, there is
a reference to one Flavius Clemens, a man of wide
repute “for his want of energy,” and in
a marginal note he has written:

“I guess this is where our line starts.”

It was like him to write that. It spoke in his
whimsical fashion the attitude of humility, the ready
acknowledgment of shortcoming, which was his chief
characteristic and made him lovable—­in his
personality and in his work.

Historically, we need not accept this identity of
the Clemens ancestry. The name itself has a kindly
meaning, and was not an uncommon one in Rome.
There was an early pope by that name, and it appears
now and again in the annals of the Middle Ages.
More lately there was a Gregory Clemens, an English
landowner who became a member of Parliament under
Cromwell and signed the death-warrant of Charles I.
Afterward he was tried as a regicide, his estates
were confiscated, and his head was exposed on a pole
on the top of Westminster Hall.

Tradition says that the family of Gregory Clemens
did not remain in England, but emigrated to Virginia
(or New Jersey), and from them, in direct line, descended
the Virginia Clemenses, including John Marshall Clemens,
the father of Mark Twain. Perhaps the line could
be traced, and its various steps identified, but,
after all, an ancestor more or less need not matter
when it is the story of a descendant that is to be
written.

Of Mark Twain’s immediate forebears, however,
there is something to be said. His paternal grandfather,
whose name also was Samuel, was a man of culture and
literary taste. In 1797 he married a Virginia
girl, Pamela Goggin; and of their five children John
Marshall Clemens, born August 11, 1798, was the eldest—­becoming
male head of the family at the age of seven, when
his father was accidentally killed at a house-raising.
The family was not a poor one, but the boy grew up
with a taste for work. As a youth he became a
clerk in an iron manufactory, at Lynchburg, and doubtless
studied at night. At all events, he acquired an
education, but injured his health in the mean time,
and somewhat later, with his mother and the younger
children, removed to Adair County, Kentucky, where
the widow presently married a sweetheart of her girlhood,
one Simon Hancock, a good man. In due course,
John Clemens was sent to Columbia, the countyseat,
to study law. When the living heirs became of
age he administered his father’s estate, receiving
as his own share three negro slaves; also a mahogany
sideboard, which remains among the Clemens effects
to this day.

This was in 1821. John Clemens was now a young
man of twenty-three, never very robust, but with a
good profession, plenty of resolution, and a heart
full of hope and dreams. Sober, industrious, and
unswervingly upright, it seemed certain that he must
make his mark. That he was likely to be somewhat
too optimistic, even visionary, was not then regarded
as a misfortune.

Page 3

It was two years later that he met Jane Lampton; whose
mother was a Casey —­a Montgomery-Casey
whose father was of the Lamptons (Lambtons) of Durham,
England, and who on her own account was reputed to
be the handsomest girl and the wittiest, as well as
the best dancer, in all Kentucky. The Montgomeries
and the Caseys of Kentucky had been Indian fighters
in the Daniel Boone period, and grandmother Casey,
who had been Jane Montgomery, had worn moccasins in
her girlhood, and once saved her life by jumping a
fence and out-running a redskin pursuer. The
Montgomery and Casey annals were full of blood-curdling
adventures, and there is to-day a Casey County next
to Adair, with a Montgomery County somewhat farther
east. As for the Lamptons, there is an earldom
in the English family, and there were claimants even
then in the American branch. All these things
were worth while in Kentucky, but it was rare Jane
Lampton herself—­gay, buoyant, celebrated
for her beauty and her grace; able to dance all night,
and all day too, for that matter—­that won
the heart of John Marshall Clemens, swept him off his
feet almost at the moment of their meeting. Many
of the characteristics that made Mark Twain famous
were inherited from his mother. His sense of humor,
his prompt, quaintly spoken philosophy, these were
distinctly her contribution to his fame. Speaking
of her in a later day, he once said:

“She had a sort of ability which is rare in
man and hardly existent in woman—­the ability
to say a humorous thing with the perfect air of not
knowing it to be humorous.”

She bequeathed him this, without doubt; also her delicate
complexion; her wonderful wealth of hair; her small,
shapely hands and feet, and the pleasant drawling
speech which gave her wit, and his, a serene and perfect
setting.

It was a one-sided love affair, the brief courtship
of Jane Lampton and John Marshall Clemens. All
her life, Jane Clemens honored her husband, and while
he lived served him loyally; but the choice of her
heart had been a young physician of Lexington with
whom she had quarreled, and her prompt engagement
with John Clemens was a matter of temper rather than
tenderness. She stipulated that the wedding take
place at once, and on May 6, 1823, they were married.
She was then twenty; her husband twenty-five.
More than sixty years later, when John Clemens had
long been dead, she took a railway journey to a city
where there was an Old Settlers’ Convention,
because among the names of those attending she had
noticed the name of the lover of her youth. She
meant to humble herself to him and ask forgiveness
after all the years. She arrived too late; the
convention was over, and he was gone. Mark Twain
once spoke of this, and added:

“It is as pathetic a romance as any that has
crossed the field of my personal experience in a long
lifetime.”

II

THE FORTUNES OF JOHN AND JANE CLEMENS

Page 4

With all his ability and industry, and with the-best
of intentions, John Clemens would seem to have had
an unerring faculty for making business mistakes.
It was his optimistic outlook, no doubt—­his
absolute confidence in the prosperity that lay just
ahead—­which led him from one unfortunate
locality or enterprise to another, as long as he lived.
About a year after his marriage he settled with his
young wife in Gainsborough, Tennessee, a mountain
town on the Cumberland River, and here, in 1825, their
first child, a boy, was born. They named him Orion—­after
the constellation, perhaps—­though they
changed the accent to the first syllable, calling
it Orion. Gainsborough was a small place with
few enough law cases; but it could hardly have been
as small, or furnished as few cases; as the next one
selected, which was Jamestown, Fentress County, still
farther toward the Eastward Mountains. Yet Jamestown
had the advantage of being brand new, and in the eye
of his fancy John Clemens doubtless saw it the future
metropolis of east Tennessee, with himself its foremost
jurist and citizen. He took an immediate and active
interest in the development of the place, established
the county-seat there, built the first Court House,
and was promptly elected as circuit clerk of the court.

It was then that he decided to lay the foundation
of a fortune for himself and his children by acquiring
Fentress County land. Grants could be obtained
in those days at the expense of less than a cent an
acre, and John Clemens believed that the years lay
not far distant when the land would increase in value
ten thousand, twenty, perhaps even a hundred thousandfold.
There was no wrong estimate in that. Land covered
with the finest primeval timber, and filled with precious
minerals, could hardly fail to become worth millions,
even though his entire purchase of 75,000 acres probably
did not cost him more than $500. The great tract
lay about twenty nines to the southward of Jamestown.
Standing in the door of the Court House he had built,
looking out over the “Knob” of the Cumberland
Mountains toward his vast possessions, he said:

“Whatever befalls me now, my heirs are secure.
I may not live to see these acres turn into silver
and gold, but my children will.”

Such was the creation of that mirage of wealth, the
“Tennessee land,” which all his days and
for long afterward would lie just ahead—­a
golden vision, its name the single watchword of the
family fortunes—­the dream fading with years,
only materializing at last as a theme in a story of
phantom riches, The Gilded Age.

Yet for once John Clemens saw clearly, and if his
dream did not come true he was in no wise to blame.
The land is priceless now, and a corporation of the
Clemens heirs is to-day contesting the title of a thin
fragment of it—­about one thousand acres—­overlooked
in some survey.

Page 5

Believing the future provided for, Clemens turned
his attention to present needs. He built himself
a house, unusual in its style and elegance. It
had two windows in each room, and its walls were covered
with plastering, something which no one in Jamestown
had ever seen before. He was regarded as an aristocrat.
He wore a swallow-tail coat of fine blue jeans, instead
of the coarse brown native-made cloth. The blue-jeans
coat was ornamented with brass buttons and cost one
dollar and twenty-five cents a yard, a high price
for that locality and time. His wife wore a calico
dress for company, while the neighbor wives wore homespun
linsey-woolsey. The new house was referred to
as the Crystal Palace. When John and Jane Clemens
attended balls—­there were continuous balls
during the holidays—­they were considered
the most graceful dancers.

Jamestown did not become the metropolis he had dreamed.
It attained almost immediately to a growth of twenty-five
houses—­mainly log houses —­and
stopped there. The country, too, was sparsely
settled; law practice was slender and unprofitable,
the circuit-riding from court to court was very bad
for one of his physique. John Clemens saw his
reserve of health and funds dwindling, and decided
to embark in merchandise. He built himself a
store and put in a small country stock of goods.
These he exchanged for ginseng, chestnuts, lampblack,
turpentine, rosin, and other produce of the country,
which he took to Louisville every spring and fall
in six-horse wagons. In the mean time he would
seem to have sold one or more of his slaves, doubtless
to provide capital. There was a second baby now—­a
little girl, Pamela,—­born in September,
1827. Three years later, May 1830, another little
girl, Margaret, came. By this time the store
and home were in one building, the store occupying
one room, the household requiring two—­clearly
the family fortunes were declining.

About a year after little Margaret was born, John
Clemens gave up Jamestown and moved his family and
stock of goods to a point nine miles distant, known
as the Three Forks of Wolf. The Tennessee land
was safe, of course, and would be worth millions some
day, but in the mean time the struggle for daily substance
was becoming hard.

He could not have remained at the Three Forks long,
for in 1832 we find him at still another place, on
the right bank of Wolf River, where a post-office
called Pall Mall was established, with John Clemens
as postmaster, usually addressed as “Squire”
or “Judge.” A store was run in connection
with the postoffice. At Pall Mall, in June, 1832,
another boy, Benjamin, was born.

Page 6

The family at this time occupied a log house built
by John Clemens himself, the store being kept in another
log house on the opposite bank of the river.
He no longer practised law. In The Gilded Age
we have Mark Twain’s picture of Squire Hawkins
and Obedstown, written from descriptions supplied
in later years by his mother and his brother Orion;
and, while not exact in detail, it is not regarded
as an exaggerated presentation of east Tennessee conditions
at that time. The chapter is too long and too
depressing to be set down here. The reader may
look it up for himself, if he chooses. If he
does he will not wonder that Jane Clemens’s
handsome features had become somewhat sharper, and
her manner a shade graver, with the years and burdens
of marriage, or that John Clemens at thirty-six-out
of health, out of tune with his environment —­was
rapidly getting out of heart. After all the bright
promise of the beginning, things had somehow gone
wrong, and hope seemed dwindling away.

A tall man, he had become thin and unusually pale;
he looked older than his years. Every spring
he was prostrated with what was called “sunpain,”
an acute form of headache, nerve-racking and destroying
to all persistent effort. Yet he did not retreat
from his moral and intellectual standards, or lose
the respect of that shiftless community. He was
never intimidated by the rougher element, and his eyes
were of a kind that would disconcert nine men out
of ten. Gray and deep-set under bushy brows,
they literally looked you through. Absolutely
fearless, he permitted none to trample on his rights.
It is told of John Clemens, at Jamestown, that once
when he had lost a cow he handed the minister on Sunday
morning a notice of the loss to be read from the pulpit,
according to the custom of that community. For
some reason, the minister put the document aside and
neglected it. At the close of the service Clemens
rose and, going to the pulpit, read his announcement
himself to the congregation. Those who knew Mark
Twain best will not fail to recall in him certain
of his father’s legacies.

The arrival of a letter from “Colonel Sellers”
inviting the Hawkins family to come to Missouri is
told in The Gilded Age. In reality the letter
was from John Quarles, who had married Jane Clemens’s
sister, Patsey Lampton, and settled in Florida, Monroe
County, Missouri. It was a momentous letter in
The Gilded Age, and no less so in reality, for it
shifted the entire scene of the Clemens family fortunes,
and it had to do with the birthplace and the shaping
of the career of one whose memory is likely to last
as long as American history.

III

A HUMBLE BIRTHPLACE

Page 7

Florida, Missouri, was a small village in the early
thirties—­smaller than it is now, perhaps,
though in that day it had more promise, even if less
celebrity. The West was unassembled then, undigested,
comparatively unknown. Two States, Louisiana
and Missouri, with less than half a million white
persons, were all that lay beyond the great river.
St. Louis, with its boasted ten thousand inhabitants
and its river trade with the South, was the single
metropolis in all that vast uncharted region.
There was no telegraph; there were no railroads, no
stage lines of any consequence—­scarcely
any maps. For all that one could see or guess,
one place was as promising as another, especially
a settlement like Florida, located at the forks of
a pretty stream, Salt River, which those early settlers
believed might one day become navigable and carry the
merchandise of that region down to the mighty Mississippi,
thence to the world outside.

In those days came John A. Quarles, of Kentucky, with
his wife, who had been Patsey Ann Lampton; also, later,
Benjamin Lampton, her father, and others of the Lampton
race. It was natural that they should want Jane
Clemens and her husband to give up that disheartening
east Tennessee venture and join them in this new and
promising land. It was natural, too, for John
Quarles—­happy-hearted, generous, and optimistic—­to
write the letter. There were only twenty-one
houses in Florida, but Quarles counted stables, out-buildings—­everything
with a roof on it—­and set down the number
at fifty-four.

Florida, with its iridescent promise and negligible
future, was just the kind of a place that John Clemens
with unerring instinct would be certain to select,
and the Quarles letter could have but one answer.
Yet there would be the longing for companionship,
too, and Jane Clemens must have hungered for her people.
In The Gilded Age, the Sellers letter ends:

“Come!—­rush!—­hurry!—­don’t
wait for anything!”

The Clemens family began immediately its preparation
for getting away. The store was sold, and the
farm; the last two wagon-loads of produce were sent
to Louisville; and with the aid of the money realized,
a few hundred dollars, John Clemens and his family
“flitted out into the great mysterious blank
that lay beyond the Knobs of Tennessee.”
They had a two-horse barouche, which would seem to
have been preserved out of their earlier fortunes.
The barouche held the parents and the three younger
children, Pamela, Margaret, anal the little boy, Benjamin.
There were also two extra horses, which Orion, now
ten, and Jennie, the house-girl, a slave, rode.
This was early in the spring of 1835.

They traveled by the way of their old home at Columbia,
and paid a visit to relatives. At Louisville
they embarked on a steamer bound for St. Louis; thence
overland once more through wilderness and solitude
into what was then the Far West, the promised land.

Page 8

They arrived one evening, and if Florida was not quite
all in appearance that John Clemens had dreamed, it
was at least a haven—­with John Quarles,
jovial, hospitable, and full of plans. The great
Mississippi was less than fifty miles away. Salt
River, with a system of locks and dams, would certainly
become navigable to the Forks, with Florida as its
head of navigation. It was a Sellers fancy, though
perhaps it should be said here that John Quarles was
not the chief original of that lovely character in
The Gilded Age. That was another relative—­James
Lampton, a cousin—­quite as lovable, and
a builder of even more insubstantial dreams.

John Quarles was already established in merchandise
in Florida, and was prospering in a small way.
He had also acquired a good farm, which he worked
with thirty slaves, and was probably the rich man and
leading citizen of the community. He offered
John Clemens a partnership in his store, and agreed
to aid him in the selection of some land. Furthermore,
he encouraged him to renew his practice of the law.
Thus far, at least, the Florida venture was not a
mistake, for, whatever came, matters could not be
worse than they had been in Tennessee.

In a small frame building near the center of the village,
John and Jane Clemens established their household.
It was a humble one-story affair, with two main rooms
and a lean-to kitchen, though comfortable enough for
its size, and comparatively new. It is still standing
and occupied when these lines are written, and it
should be preserved and guarded as a shrine for the
American people; for it was here that the foremost
American-born author—­the man most characteristically
American in every thought and word and action of his
life—­drew his first fluttering breath,
caught blinkingly the light of a world that in the
years to come would rise up and in its wide realm
of letters hail him as a king.

It was on a bleak day, November 30, 1835, that he
entered feebly the domain he was to conquer.
Long, afterward, one of those who knew him best said:

“He always seemed to me like some great being
from another planet—­never quite of this
race or kind.”

He may have been, for a great comet was in the sky
that year, and it would return no more until the day
when he should be borne back into the far spaces of
silence and undiscovered suns. But nobody thought
of this, then.

He was a seven-months child, and there was no fanfare
of welcome at his coming. Perhaps it was even
suggested that, in a house so small and so sufficiently
filled, there was no real need of his coming at all.
One Polly Ann Buchanan, who is said to have put the
first garment of any sort on him, lived to boast of
the fact,—­[This honor has been claimed also
for Mrs. Millie Upton and a Mrs. Damrell. Probably
all were present and assisted.]—­but she
had no particular pride in that matter then. It
was only a puny baby with a wavering promise of life.
Still, John Clemens must have regarded with favor
this first gift of fortune in a new land, for he named
the little boy Samuel, after his father, and added
the name of an old and dear Virginia friend, Langhorne.
The family fortunes would seem to have been improving
at this time, and he may have regarded the arrival
of another son as a good omen.

Page 9

With a family of eight, now, including Jennie, the
slavegirl, more room was badly needed, and he began
building without delay. The result was not a
mansion, by any means, being still of the one-story
pattern, but it was more commodious than the tiny
two-room affair. The rooms were larger, and there
was at least one ell, or extension, for kitchen and
dining-room uses. This house, completed in 1836,
occupied by the Clemens family during the remainder
of the years spent in Florida, was often in later
days pointed out as Mark Twain’s birthplace.
It missed that distinction by a few months, though
its honor was sufficient in having sheltered his early
childhood.—­[This house is no longer standing.
When it was torn down several years ago, portions
of it were carried off and manufactured into souvenirs.
Mark Twain himself disclaimed it as his birthplace,
and once wrote on a photograph of it: “No,
it is too stylish, it is not my birthplace.”]

IV

BEGINNING A LONG JOURNEY

It was not a robust childhood. The new baby managed
to go through the winter—­a matter of comment
among the family and neighbors. Added strength
came, but slowly; “Little Sam,” as they
called him, was always delicate during those early
years.

It was a curious childhood, full of weird, fantastic
impressions and contradictory influences, stimulating
alike to the imagination and that embryo philosophy
of life which begins almost with infancy. John
Clemens seldom devoted any time to the company of
his children. He looked after their comfort and
mental development as well as he could, and gave advice
on occasion. He bought a book now and then—­sometimes
a picture-book —­and subscribed for Peter
Parley’s Magazine, a marvel of delight to the
older children, but he did not join in their amusements,
and he rarely, or never, laughed. Mark Twain
did not remember ever having seen or heard his father
laugh. The problem of supplying food was a somber
one to John Clemens; also, he was working on a perpetual-motion
machine at this period, which absorbed his spare time,
and, to the inventor at least, was not a mirthful
occupation. Jane Clemens was busy, too. Her
sense of humor did not die, but with added cares and
years her temper as well as her features became sharper,
and it was just as well to be fairly out of range
when she was busy with her employments.

Little Sam’s companions were his brothers and
sisters, all older than himself: Orion, ten years
his senior, followed by Pamela and Margaret at intervals
of two and three years, then by Benjamin, a kindly
little lad whose gentle life was chiefly devoted to
looking after the baby brother, three years his junior.
But in addition to these associations, there were
the still more potent influences Of that day and section,
the intimate, enveloping institution of slavery, the
daily companionship of the slaves. All the children
of that time were fond of the negroes and confided
in them. They would, in fact, have been lost without
such protection and company.

Page 10

It was Jennie, the house-girl, and Uncle Ned, a man
of all work —­apparently acquired with the
improved prospects—­who were in real charge
of the children and supplied them with entertainment.
Wonderful entertainment it was. That was a time
of visions and dreams, small. gossip and superstitions.
Old tales were repeated over and over, with adornments
and improvements suggested by immediate events.
At evening the Clemens children, big and little, gathered
about the great open fireplace while Jennie and Uncle
Ned told tales and hair-lifting legends. Even
a baby of two or three years could follow the drift
of this primitive telling and would shiver and cling
close with the horror and delight of its curdling
thrill. The tales always began with “Once
’pon a time,” and one of them was the
story of the “Golden Arm” which the smallest
listener would one day repeat more elaborately to wider
audiences in many lands. Briefly it ran as follows:

“Once ‘Pon a time there was a man, and
he had a wife, and she had a’ arm of pure gold;
and she died, and they buried her in the graveyard;
and one night her husband went and dug her up and
cut off her golden arm and tuck it home; and one night
a ghost all in white come to him; and she was his
wife; and she says:

As Uncle Ned repeated these blood-curdling questions
he would look first one and then another of his listeners
in the eyes, with his bands drawn up in front of his
breast, his fingers turned out and crooked like claws,
while he bent with each question closer to the shrinking
forms before him. The tone was sepulchral, with
awful pause as if waiting each time for a reply.
The culmination came with a pounce on one of the group,
a shake of the shoulders, and a shout of:

“You’ve got it!’ and she tore
him all to pieces!”

And the children would shout “Lordy!”
and look furtively over their shoulders, fearing to
see a woman in white against the black wall; but,
instead, only gloomy, shapeless shadows darted across
it as the flickering flames in the fireplace went
out on one brand and flared up on another. Then
there was a story of a great ball of fire that used
to follow lonely travelers along dark roads through
the woods.

“Once ’pon a time there was a man, and
he was riding along de road and he come to a ha’nted
house, and he heard de chains’a-rattlin’
and a-rattlin’ and a-rattlin’, and a ball
of fire come rollin’ up and got under his stirrup,
and it didn’t make no difference if his horse
galloped or went slow or stood still, de ball of fire
staid under his stirrup till he got plum to de front
do’, and his wife come out and say: ’My
Gord, dat’s devil fire!’ and she had to
work a witch spell to drive it away.”

“How big was it, Uncle Ned?”

“Oh, ’bout as big as your head, and I
’spect it’s likely to come down dis yere
chimney ’most any time.”

Page 11

Certainly an atmosphere like this meant a tropic development
for the imagination of a delicate child. All
the games and daily talk concerned fanciful semi-African
conditions and strange primal possibilities. The
children of that day believed in spells and charms
and bad-luck signs, all learned of their negro guardians.

But if the negroes were the chief companions and protectors
of the children, they were likewise one of their discomforts.
The greatest real dread children knew was the fear
of meeting runaway slaves. A runaway slave was
regarded as worse than a wild beast, and treated worse
when caught. Once the children saw one brought
into Florida by six men who took him to an empty cabin,
where they threw him on the floor and bound him with
ropes. His groans were loud and frequent.
Such things made an impression that would last a lifetime.

Slave punishment, too, was not unknown, even in the
household. Jennie especially was often saucy
and obstreperous. Jane Clemens, with more strength
of character than of body, once undertook to punish
her for insolence, whereupon Jennie snatched the whip
from her hand. John Clemens was sent for in haste.
He came at once, tied Jennie’s wrists together
with a bridle rein, and administered chastisement across
the shoulders with a cowhide. These were things
all calculated to impress a sensitive child.

In pleasant weather the children roamed over the country,
hunting berries and nuts, drinking sugar-water, tying
knots in love-vine, picking the petals from daisies
to the formula “Love me-love me not,” always
accompanied by one or more, sometimes by half a dozen,
of their small darky followers. Shoes were taken
off the first of April. For a time a pair of
old woolen stockings were worn, but these soon disappeared,
leaving the feet bare for the summer. One of their
dreads was the possibility of sticking a rusty nail
into the foot, as this was liable to cause lockjaw,
a malady regarded with awe and terror. They knew
what lockjaw was—­Uncle John Quarles’s
black man, Dan, was subject to it. Sometimes
when he opened his mouth to its utmost capacity he
felt the joints slip and was compelled to put down
the cornbread, or jole and greens, or the piece of
’possum he was eating, while his mouth remained
a fixed abyss until the doctor came and restored it
to a natural position by an exertion of muscular power
that would have well-nigh lifted an ox.

Uncle John Quarles, his home, his farm, his slaves,
all were sources of never-ending delight. Perhaps
the farm was just an ordinary Missouri farm and the
slaves just average negroes, but to those children
these things were never apparent. There was a
halo about anything that belonged to Uncle John Quarles,
and that halo was the jovial, hilarious kindness of
that gentle-hearted, humane man. To visit at his
house was for a child to be in a heaven of mirth and
pranks continually. When the children came for
eggs he would say:

Page 12

“Your hens won’t lay, eh? Tell your
maw to feed ’em parched corn and drive ’em
uphill,” and this was always a splendid stroke
of humor to his small hearers.

Also, he knew how to mimic with his empty hands the
peculiar patting and tossing of a pone of corn-bread
before placing it in the oven. He would make
the most fearful threats to his own children, for disobedience,
but never executed any of them. When they were
out fishing and returned late he would say:

“You—­if I have to hunt you again
after dark, I will make you smell like a burnt horn!”

Nothing could exceed the ferocity of this threat,
and all the children, with delightful terror and curiosity,
wondered what would happen—­if it ever did
happen—­that would result in giving a child
that peculiar savor. Altogether it was a curious
early childhood that Little Sam had—­at least
it seems so to us now. Doubtless it was commonplace
enough for that time and locality.

V

THE WAY OF FORTUNE

Perhaps John Quarles’s jocular, happy-go-lucky
nature and general conduct did not altogether harmonize
with John Clemens’s more taciturn business methods.
Notwithstanding the fact that he was a builder of dreams,
Clemens was neat and methodical, with his papers always
in order. He had a hearty dislike for anything
resembling frivolity and confusion, which very likely
were the chief features of John Quarles’s storekeeping.
At all events, they dissolved partnership at the end
of two or three years, and Clemens opened business
for himself across the street. He also practised
law whenever there were cases, and was elected justice
of the peace, acquiring the permanent title of “Judge.”
He needed some one to assist in the store, and took
in Orion, who was by this time twelve or thirteen
years old; but, besides his youth, Orion—­all
his days a visionary—­was a studious, pensive
lad with no taste for commerce. Then a partnership
was formed with a man who developed neither capital
nor business ability, and proved a disaster in the
end. The modest tide of success which had come
with John Clemens’s establishment at Florida
had begun to wane. Another boy, Henry, born in
July, 1838, added one more responsibility to his burdens.

There still remained a promise of better things.
There seemed at least a good prospect that the scheme
for making Salt River navigable was likely to become
operative. With even small boats (bateaux) running
as high as the lower branch of the South Fork, Florida
would become an emporium of trade, and merchants and
property-owners of that village would reap a harvest.
An act of the Legislature was passed incorporating
the navigation company, with Judge Clemens as its
president. Congress was petitioned to aid this
work of internal improvement. So confident was
the company of success that the hamlet was thrown into
a fever of excitement by the establishment of a boatyard
and, the actual construction of a bateau; but a Democratic
Congress turned its back on the proposed improvement.
No boat bigger than a skiff ever ascended Salt River,
though there was a wild report, evidently a hoax, that
a party of picnickers had seen one night a ghostly
steamer, loaded and manned, puffing up the stream.
An old Scotchman, Hugh Robinson, when he heard of
it, said:

Page 13

“I don’t doubt a word they say. In
Scotland, it often happens that when people have been
killed, or are troubled, they send their spirits abroad
and they are seen as much like themselves as a reflection
in a looking-glass. That was a ghost of some
wrecked steamboat.”

But John Quarles, who was present, laughed:

“If ever anybody was in trouble, the men on
that steamboat were,” he said. “They
were the Democratic candidates at the last election.
They killed Salt River improvements, and Salt River
has killed them. Their ghosts went up the river
on a ghostly steamboat.”

It is possible that this comment, which was widely
repeated and traveled far, was the origin of the term
“Going up Salt River,” as applied to defeated
political candidates.—­[The dictionaries
give this phrase as probably traceable to a small,
difficult stream in Kentucky; but it seems more reasonable
to believe that it originated in Quarles’s witty
comment.]

No other attempt was ever made to establish navigation
on Salt River. Rumors of railroads already running
in the East put an end to any such thought. Railroads
could run anywhere and were probably cheaper and easier
to maintain than the difficult navigation requiring
locks and dams. Salt River lost its prestige
as a possible water highway and became mere scenery.
Railroads have ruined greater rivers than the Little
Salt, and greater villages than Florida, though neither
Florida nor Salt River has been touched by a railroad
to this day. Perhaps such close detail of early
history may be thought unnecessary in a work of this
kind, but all these things were definite influences
in the career of the little lad whom the world would
one day know as Mark Twain.

VI

A NEW HOME

The death of little Margaret was the final misfortune
that came to the Clemens family in Florida. Doubtless
it hastened their departure. There was a superstition
in those days that to refer to health as good luck,
rather than to ascribe it to the kindness of Providence,
was to bring about a judgment. Jane Clemens one
day spoke to a neighbor of their good luck in thus
far having lost no member of their family. That
same day, when the sisters, Pamela and Margaret, returned
from school, Margaret laid her books on the table,
looked in the glass at her flushed cheeks, pulled
out the trundle-bed, and lay down.

She was never in her right mind again. The doctor
was sent for and diagnosed the case “bilious
fever.” One evening, about nine o’clock,
Orion was sitting on the edge of the trundle-bed by
the patient, when the door opened and Little Sam,
then about four years old, walked in from his bedroom,
fast asleep. He came to the side of the trundle-bed
and pulled at the bedding near Margaret’s shoulder
for some time before he woke. Next day the little
girl was “picking at the coverlet,” and
it was known that she could not live. About a

Page 14

week later she died. She was nine years old,
a beautiful child, plump in form, with rosy cheeks,
black hair, and bright eyes. This was in August,
1839. It was Little Sam’s first sight of
death—­the first break in the Clemens family:
it left a sad household. The shoemaker who lived
next door claimed to have seen several weeks previous,
in a vision, the coffin and the funeral-procession
pass the gate by the winding road, to the cemetery,
exactly as it happened.

Matters were now going badly enough with John Clemens.
Yet he never was without one great comforting thought—­the
future of the Tennessee land. It underlaid every
plan; it was an anodyne for every ill.

“When we sell the Tennessee land everything
will be all right,” was the refrain that brought
solace in the darkest hours. A blessing for him
that this was so, for he had little else to brighten
his days. Negotiations looking to the sale of
the land were usually in progress. When the pressure
became very hard and finances were at their lowest
ebb, it was offered at any price—­at five
cents an acre, sometimes. When conditions improved,
however little, the price suddenly advanced even to
its maximum of one thousand dollars an acre. Now
and then a genuine offer came along, but, though eagerly
welcomed at the moment, it was always refused after
a little consideration.

“We will struggle along somehow, Jane,”
he would say. “We will not throw away the
children’s fortune.”

There was one other who believed in the Tennessee
land—­Jane Clemens’s favorite cousin,
James Lampton, the courtliest, gentlest, most prodigal
optimist of all that guileless race. To James
Lampton the land always had “millions in it”—­everything
had. He made stupendous fortunes daily, in new
ways. The bare mention of the Tennessee land sent
him off into figures that ended with the purchase
of estates in England adjoining those of the Durham
Lamptons, whom he always referred to as “our
kindred,” casually mentioning the whereabouts
and health of the “present earl.”
Mark Twain merely put James Lampton on paper when he
created Colonel Sellers, and the story of the Hawkins
family as told in The Gilded Age reflects clearly
the struggle of those days. The words “Tennessee
land,” with their golden promise, became his
earliest remembered syllables. He grew to detest
them in time, for they came to mean mockery.

One of the offers received was the trifling sum of
two hundred and fifty dollars, and such was the moment’s
need that even this was considered. Then, of
course, it was scornfully refused. In some autobiographical
chapters which Orion Clemens left behind he said:

“If we had received that two hundred and fifty
dollars, it would have been more than we ever made,
clear of expenses, out of the whole of the Tennessee
land, after forty years of worry to three generations.”

What a less speculative and more logical reasoner
would have done in the beginning, John Clemens did
now; he selected a place which, though little more
than a village, was on a river already navigable—­a
steamboat town with at least the beginnings of manufacturing
and trade already established—­that is to
say, Hannibal, Missouri—­a point well chosen,
as shown by its prosperity to-day.

Page 15

He did not delay matters. When he came to a decision,
he acted quickly. He disposed of a portion of
his goods and shipped the remainder overland; then,
with his family and chattels loaded in a wagon, he
was ready to set out for the new home. Orion
records that, for some reason, his father did not
invite him to get into the wagon, and how, being always
sensitive to slight, he had regarded this in the light
of deliberate desertion.

“The sense of abandonment caused my heart to
ache. The wagon had gone a few feet when I was
discovered and invited to enter. How I wished
they had not missed me until they had arrived at Hannibal.
Then the world would have seen how I was treated and
would have cried ‘Shame!’”

This incident, noted and remembered, long after became
curiously confused with another, in Mark Twain’s
mind. In an autobiographical chapter published
in The North American Review he tells of the move to
Hannibal and relates that he himself was left behind
by his absentminded family. The incident of his
own abandonment did not happen then, but later, and
somewhat differently. It would indeed be an absent-minded
family if the parents, and the sister and brothers
ranging up to fourteen years of age, should drive
off leaving Little Sam, age four, behind.

—­[As mentioned in the Prefatory Note, Mark
Twain’s memory played him many tricks in later
life. Incidents were filtered through his vivid
imagination until many of them bore little relation
to the actual occurrence. Some of these lapses
were only amusing, but occasionally they worked an
unintentional injustice. It is the author’s
purpose in every instance, so far as is possible,
to keep the record straight.]

VII

THE LITTLE TOWN OF HANNIBAL

Hannibal in 1839 was already a corporate community
and had an atmosphere of its own. It was a town
with a distinct Southern flavor, though rather more
astir than the true Southern community of that period;
more Western in that it planned, though without excitement,
certain new enterprises and made a show, at least,
of manufacturing. It was somnolent (a slave town
could not be less than that), but it was not wholly
asleep—­that is to say, dead—­and
it was tranquilly content. Mark Twain remembered
it as “the white town drowsing in the sunshine
of a summer morning,. . . the great Mississippi, the
magnificent Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide tide
along; . . . the dense forest away on the other side.”

The little city was proud of its scenery, and justly
so: circled with bluffs, with Holliday’s
Hill on the north, Lover’s Leap on the south,
the shining river in the foreground, there was little
to be desired in the way of setting.

Page 16

The river, of course, was the great highway.
Rafts drifted by; steamboats passed up and down and
gave communication to the outside world; St. Louis,
the metropolis, was only one hundred miles away.
Hannibal was inclined to rank itself as of next importance,
and took on airs accordingly. It had society,
too—­all kinds—­from the negroes
and the town drunkards ("General” Gaines and
Jimmy Finn; later, Old Ben Blankenship) up through
several nondescript grades of mechanics and tradesmen
to the professional men of the community, who wore
tall hats, ruffled shirt-fronts, and swallow-tail
coats, usually of some positive color-blue, snuff-brown,
and green. These and their families constituted
the true aristocracy of the Southern town. Most
of them had pleasant homes—­brick or large
frame mansions, with colonnaded entrances, after the
manner of all Southern architecture of that period,
which had an undoubted Greek root, because of certain
drawing-books, it is said, accessible to the builders
of those days. Most of them, also, had means
—­slaves and land which yielded an income
in addition to their professional earnings. They
lived in such style as was considered fitting to their
rank, and had such comforts as were then obtainable.

It was to this grade of society that judge Clemens
and his family belonged, but his means no longer enabled
him to provide either the comforts or the ostentation
of his class. He settled his family and belongings
in a portion of a house on Hill Street—­the
Pavey Hotel; his merchandise he established modestly
on Main Street, with Orion, in a new suit of clothes,
as clerk. Possibly the clothes gave Orion a renewed
ambition for mercantile life, but this waned.
Business did not begin actively, and he was presently
dreaming and reading away the time. A little
later he became a printer’s apprentice, in the
office of the Hannibal Journal, at his father’s
suggestion.

Orion Clemens perhaps deserves a special word here.
He was to be much associated with his more famous
brother for many years, and his personality as boy
and man is worth at least a casual consideration.
He was fifteen now, and had developed characteristics
which in a greater or less degree were to go with
him through life. Of a kindly, loving disposition,
like all of the Clemens children, quick of temper,
but always contrite, or forgiving, he was never without
the fond regard of those who knew him best. His
weaknesses were manifold, but, on the whole, of a
negative kind. Honorable and truthful, he had
no tendency to bad habits or unworthy pursuits; indeed,
he had no positive traits of any sort. That was
his chief misfortune. Full of whims and fancies,
unstable, indeterminate, he was swayed by every passing
emotion and influence. Daily he laid out a new
course of study and achievement, only to fling it
aside because of some chance remark or printed paragraph
or bit of advice that ran contrary to his purpose.
Such a life is bound to be a succession of extremes—­alternate
periods of supreme exaltation and despair. In
his autobiographical chapters, already mentioned, Orion
sets down every impulse and emotion and failure with
that faithful humility which won him always the respect,
if not always the approval, of men.

Page 17

Printing was a step downward, for it was a trade,
and Orion felt it keenly. A gentleman’s
son and a prospective heir of the Tennessee land,
he was entitled to a profession. To him it was
punishment, and the disgrace weighed upon him.
Then he remembered that Benjamin Franklin had been
a printer and had eaten only an apple and a bunch of
grapes for his dinner. Orion decided to emulate
Franklin, and for a time he took only a biscuit and
a glass of water at a meal, foreseeing the day when
he should electrify the world with his eloquence.
He was surprised to find how clear his mind was on
this low diet and how rapidly he learned his trade.

Of the other children Pamela, now twelve, and Benjamin,
seven, were put to school. They were pretty,
attractive children, and Henry, the baby, was a sturdy
toddler, the pride of the household. Little Sam
was the least promising of the flock. He remained
delicate, and developed little beyond a tendency to
pranks. He was a queer, fanciful, uncommunicative
child that detested indoors and would run away if not
watched—­always in the direction of the
river. He walked in his sleep, too, and often
the rest of the household got up in the middle of
the night to find him fretting with cold in some dark
corner. The doctor was summoned for him oftener
than was good for the family purse—­or for
him, perhaps, if we may credit the story of heavy
dosings of those stern allopathic days.

Yet he would appear not to have been satisfied with
his heritage of ailments, and was ambitious for more.
An epidemic of measles—­the black, deadly
kind—­was ravaging Hannibal, and he yearned
for the complaint. He yearned so much that when
he heard of a playmate, one of the Bowen boys, who
had it, he ran away and, slipping into the house, crept
into bed with the infection. The success of this
venture was complete. Some days later, the Clemens
family gathered tearfully around Little Sam’s
bed to see him die. According to his own after-confession,
this gratified him, and he was willing to die for
the glory of that touching scene. However, he
disappointed them, and was presently up and about in
search of fresh laurels.—­[In later life
Mr. Clemens did not recollect the precise period of
this illness. With habitual indifference he assigned
it to various years, as his mood or the exigencies
of his theme required. Without doubt the “measles”
incident occurred when he was very young.]—­He
must have been a wearing child, and we may believe
that Jane Clemens, with her varied cares and labors,
did not always find him a comfort.

“You gave me more uneasiness than any child
I had,” she said to him once, in her old age.

“I suppose you were afraid I wouldn’t
live,” he suggested, in his tranquil fashion.

She looked at him with that keen humor that had not
dulled in eighty years. “No; afraid you
would,” she said. But that was only her
joke, for she was the most tenderhearted creature
in the world, and, like mothers in general, had a
weakness for the child that demanded most of her mother’s
care.

Page 18

It was mainly on his account that she spent her summers
on John Quarles’s farm near Florida, and it
was during the first summer that an incident already
mentioned occurred. It was decided that the whole
family should go for a brief visit, and one Saturday
morning in June Mrs. Clemens, with the three elder
children and the baby, accompanied by Jennie, the
slave-girl, set out in a light wagon for the day’s
drive, leaving Judge Clemens to bring Little Sam on
horseback Sunday morning. The hour was early
when Judge Clemens got up to saddle his horse, and
Little Sam was still asleep. The horse being
ready, Clemens, his mind far away, mounted and rode
off without once remembering the little boy, and in
the course of the afternoon arrived at his brother-in-law’s
farm. Then he was confronted by Jane Clemens,
who demanded Little Sam.

“Why,” said the judge, aghast, “I
never once thought of him after I left him asleep.”

Wharton Lampton, a brother of Jane Clemens and Patsey
Quarles, hastily saddled a horse and set out, helter-skelter,
for Hannibal. He arrived in the early dusk.
The child was safe enough, but he was crying with
loneliness and hunger. He had spent most of the
day in the locked, deserted house playing with a hole
in the meal-sack where the meal ran out, when properly
encouraged, in a tiny stream. He was fed and
comforted, and next day was safe on the farm, which
during that summer and those that followed it, became
so large a part of his boyhood and lent a coloring
to his later years.

VIII

THE FARM

We have already mentioned the delight of the Clemens
children in Uncle John Quarles’s farm.
To Little Sam it was probably a life-saver. With
his small cousin, Tabitha,—­[Tabitha Quarles,
now Mrs. Greening, of Palmyra, Missouri, has supplied
most of the material for this chapter.] —­just
his own age (they called her Puss), he wandered over
that magic domain, fording new marvels at every step,
new delights everywhere. A slave-girl, Mary,
usually attended them, but she was only six years
older, and not older at all in reality, so she was
just a playmate, and not a guardian to be feared or
evaded. Sometimes, indeed, it was necessary for
her to threaten to tell “Miss Patsey” or
“Miss Jane,” when her little charges insisted
on going farther or staying later than she thought
wise from the viewpoint of her own personal safety;
but this was seldom, and on the whole a stay at the
farm was just one long idyllic dream of summer-time
and freedom.

The farm-house stood in the middle of a large yard
entered by a stile made of sawed-off logs of graduated
heights. In the corner of the yard were hickory
trees, and black walnut, and beyond the fence the hill
fell away past the barns, the corn-cribs, and the
tobacco-house to a brook—­a divine place
to wade, with deep, dark, forbidden pools. Down
in the pasture there were swings under the big trees,

Page 19

and Mary swung the children and ran under them until
their feet touched the branches, and then took her
turn and “balanced” herself so high that
their one wish was to be as old as Mary and swing
in that splendid way. All the woods were full
of squirrels—­gray squirrels and the red-fox
species—­and many birds and flowers; all
the meadows were gay with clover and butterflies, and
musical with singing grasshoppers and calling larks;
there were blackberries in the fence rows, apples
and peaches in the orchard, and watermelons in the
corn. They were not always ripe, those watermelons,
and once, when Little Sam had eaten several pieces
of a green one, he was seized with cramps so severe
that most of the household expected him to die forthwith.

Jane Clemens was not heavily concerned.

“Sammy will pull through,” she said; “he
wasn’t born to die that way.”

It is the slender constitution that bears the strain.
“Sammy” did pull through, and in a brief
time was ready for fresh adventure.

There were plenty of these: there were the horses
to ride to and from the fields; the ox-wagons to ride
in when they had dumped their heavy loads; the circular
horsepower to ride on when they threshed the wheat.
This last was a dangerous and forbidden pleasure,
but the children would dart between the teams and
climb on, and the slave who was driving would pretend
not to see. Then in the evening when the black
woman came along, going after the cows, the children
would race ahead and set the cows running and jingling
their bells—­especially Little Sam, for he
was a wild-headed, impetuous child of sudden ecstasies
that sent him capering and swinging his arms, venting
his emotions in a series of leaps and shrieks and
somersaults, and spasms of laughter as he lay rolling
in the grass.

His tendency to mischief grew with this wide liberty,
improved health, and the encouragement of John Quarles’s
good-natured, fun-loving slaves.

The negro quarters beyond the orchard were especially
attractive. In one cabin lived a bed-ridden,
white-headed old woman whom the children visited daily
and looked upon with awe; for she was said to be a
thousand years old and to have talked with Moses.
The negroes believed this; the children, too, of course,
and that she had lost her health in the desert, coming
out of Egypt. The bald spot on her head was caused
by fright at seeing Pharaoh drowned. She also
knew how to avert spells and ward off witches, which
added greatly to her prestige. Uncle Dan’l
was a favorite, too-kind-hearted and dependable, while
his occasional lockjaw gave him an unusual distinction.
Long afterward he would become Nigger Jim in the Tom
Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn tales, and so in his gentle
guilelessness win immortality and the love of many
men.

Page 20

Certainly this was a heavenly place for a little boy,
the farm of Uncle John Quarles, and the house was
as wonderful as its surroundings. It was a two-story
double log building, with a spacious floor (roofed
in) connecting the two divisions. In the summer
the table was set in the middle of that shady, breezy
pavilion, and sumptuous meals were served in the lavish
Southern style, brought to the table in vast dishes
that left only room for rows of plates around the
edge. Fried chicken, roast pig, turkeys, ducks,
geese, venison just killed, squirrels, rabbits, partridges,
pheasants, prairie-chickens—­the list is
too long to be served here. If a little boy could
not improve on that bill of fare and in that atmosphere,
his case was hopeless indeed. His mother kept
him there until the late fall, when the chilly evenings
made them gather around the wide, blazing fireplace.
Sixty years later he wrote of that scene:

I can see the room yet with perfect
clearness. I can see all its buildings, all
its details: the family-room of the house, with
the trundle-bed in one corner and the spinning-wheel
in another a wheel whose rising and falling wail,
heard from a distance, was the mournfulest of
all sounds to me, and made me homesick and low- spirited,
and filled my atmosphere with the wandering spirits
of the dead; the vast fireplace, piled high with
flaming logs, from whose ends a sugary sap bubbled
out, but did not go to waste, for we scraped it
off and ate it; . . . the lazy cat spread out on the
rough hearthstones, the drowsy dogs braced against
the jambs, blinking; my aunt in one chimney-corner
and my uncle in the other smoking his corn-cob
pipe; the slick and carpetless oak floor faintly
mirroring the flame tongues, and freckled with black
indentations where fire-coals had popped out and
died a leisurely death; half a dozen children
romping in the background twilight; splint-bottom
chairs here and there—­some with rockers;
a cradle —­out of service, but waiting
with confidence.

One is tempted to dwell on this period, to quote prodigally
from these vivid memories—­the thousand
minute impressions which the child’s sensitive
mind acquired in that long-ago time and would reveal
everywhere in his work in the years to come.
For him it was education of a more valuable and lasting
sort than any he would ever acquire from books.

IX

SCHOOL-DAYS

Nevertheless, on his return to Hannibal, it was decided
that Little Sam was now ready to go to school.
He was about five years old, and the months on the
farm had left him wiry and lively, even if not very
robust. His mother declared that he gave her
more trouble than all the other children put together.

“He drives me crazy with his didoes, when he
is in the house,” she used to say; “and
when he is out of it I am expecting every minute that
some one will bring him home half dead.”

Page 21

He did, in fact, achieve the first of his “nine
narrow escapes from drowning” about this time,
and was pulled out of the river one afternoon and
brought home in a limp and unpromising condition.
When with mullein tea and castor-oil she had restored
him to activity, she said: “I guess there
wasn’t much danger. People born to be hanged
are safe in water.”

She declared she was willing to pay somebody to take
him off her hands for a part of each day and try to
teach him manners. Perhaps this is a good place
to say that Jane Clemens was the original of Tom Sawyer’s
“Aunt Polly,” and her portrait as presented
in that book is considered perfect. Kind-hearted,
fearless, looking and acting ten years older than
her age, as women did in that time, always outspoken
and sometimes severe, she was regarded as a “character”
by her friends, and beloved by them as, a charitable,
sympathetic woman whom it was good to know. Her
sense of pity was abnormal. She refused to kill
even flies, and punished the cat for catching mice.
She, would drown the young kittens, when necessary,
but warmed the water for the purpose. On coming
to Hannibal, she joined the Presbyterian Church, and
her religion was of that clean-cut, strenuous kind
which regards as necessary institutions hell and Satan,
though she had been known to express pity for the latter
for being obliged to surround himself with such poor
society. Her children she directed with considerable
firmness, and all were tractable and growing in grace
except Little Sam. Even baby Henry at two was
lisping the prayers that Sam would let go by default
unless carefully guarded. His sister Pamela,
who was eight years older and always loved him dearly,
usually supervised these spiritual exercises, and in
her gentle care earned immortality as the Cousin Mary
of Tom Sawyer. He would say his prayers willingly
enough when encouraged by sister Pamela, but he much
preferred to sit up in bed and tell astonishing tales
of the day’s adventure—­tales which
made prayer seem a futile corrective and caused his
listeners to wonder why the lightning was restrained
so long. They did not know they were glimpsing
the first outcroppings of a genius that would one
day amaze and entertain the nations. Neighbors
hearing of these things (also certain of his narrations)
remonstrated with Mrs. Clemens.

“You don’t believe anything that child
says, I hope.”

“Oh yes, I know his average. I discount
him ninety per cent. The rest is pure gold.”
At another time she said: “Sammy is a well
of truth, but you can’t bring it all up in one
bucket.”

This, however, is digression; the incidents may have
happened somewhat later.

A certain Miss E. Horr was selected to receive the
payment for taking charge of Little Sam during several
hours each day, directing him mentally and morally
in the mean time. Her school was then in a log
house on Main Street (later it was removed to Third
Street), and was of the primitive old-fashioned kind,
with pupils of all ages, ranging in advancement from
the primer to the third reader, from the tables to
long division, with a little geography and grammar
and a good deal of spelling. Long division and
the third reader completed the curriculum in that
school. Pupils who decided to take a post-graduate
course went to a Mr. Cross, who taught in a frame
house on the hill facing what is now the Public Square.

Page 22

Miss Horr received twenty-five cents a week for each
pupil, and opened her school with prayer; after which
came a chapter of the Bible, with explanations, and
the rules of conduct. Then the A B C class was
called, because their recital was a hand-to-hand struggle,
requiring no preparation.

The rules of conduct that first day interested Little
Sam. He calculated how much he would need to
trim in, to sail close to the danger-line and still
avoid disaster. He made a miscalculation during
the forenoon and received warning; a second offense
would mean punishment. He did not mean to be
caught the second time, but he had not learned Miss
Horr yet, and was presently startled by being commanded
to go out and bring a stick for his own correction.

This was certainly disturbing. It was sudden,
and then he did not know much about the selection
of sticks. Jane Clemens had usually used her
hand. It required a second command to get him
headed in the right direction, and he was a trifle
dazed when he got outside. He had the forests
of Missouri to select from, but choice was difficult.
Everything looked too big and competent. Even
the smallest switch had a wiry, discouraging look.
Across the way was a cooper-shop with a good many
shavings outside.

One had blown across and lay just in front of him.
It was an inspiration. He picked it up and, solemnly
entering the school-room, meekly handed it to Miss
Herr.

Perhaps Miss Horr’s sense of humor prompted
forgiveness, but discipline must be maintained.

“Samuel Langhorne Clemens,” she said (he
had never heard it all strung together in that ominous
way), “I am ashamed of you! Jimmy Dunlap,
go and bring a switch for Sammy.” And Jimmy
Dunlap went, and the switch was of a sort to give
the little boy an immediate and permanent distaste
for school. He informed his mother when he went
home at noon that he did not care for school; that
he had no desire to be a great man; that he preferred
to be a pirate or an Indian and scalp or drown such
people as Miss Horr. Down in her heart his mother
was sorry for him, but what she said was that she
was glad there was somebody at last who could take
him in hand.

He returned to school, but he never learned to like
it. Each morning he went with reluctance and
remained with loathing—­the loathing which
he always had for anything resembling bondage and
tyranny or even the smallest curtailment of liberty.
A School was ruled with a rod in those days, a busy
and efficient rod, as the Scripture recommended.
Of the smaller boys Little Sam’s back was sore
as often as the next, and he dreamed mainly of a day
when, grown big and fierce, he would descend with
his band and capture Miss Horr and probably drag her
by the hair, as he had seen Indians and pirates do
in the pictures. When the days of early summer
came again; when from his desk he could see the sunshine
lighting the soft green of Holliday’s Hill,
with the purple distance beyond, and the glint of
the river, it seemed to him that to be shut up with
a Webster’s spelling-book and a cross old maid
was more than human nature could bear. Among
the records preserved from that far-off day there
remains a yellow slip, whereon in neat old-fashioned
penmanship is inscribed:

Page 23

MissPamelaClemens

Has won the love of her teacher
and schoolmates by her amiable
deportment and faithful application to her various
studies.
E. Horr, Teacher.

If any such testimonial was ever awarded to Little
Sam, diligent search has failed to reveal it.
If he won the love of his teacher and playmates it
was probably for other reasons.

Yet he must have learned, somehow, for he could read
presently and was soon regarded as a good speller
for his years. His spelling came as a natural
gift, as did most of his attainments, then and later.

It has already been mentioned that Miss Horr opened
her school with prayer and Scriptural readings.
Little Sam did not especially delight in these things,
but he respected them. Not to do so was dangerous.
Flames were being kept brisk for little boys who were
heedless of sacred matters; his home teaching convinced
him of that. He also respected Miss Horr as an
example of orthodox faith, and when she read the text
“Ask and ye shall receive” and assured
them that whoever prayed for a thing earnestly, his
prayer would be answered, he believed it. A small
schoolmate, the balker’s daughter, brought gingerbread
to school every morning, and Little Sam was just “honing”
for some of it. He wanted a piece of that baker’s
gingerbread more than anything else in the world,
and he decided to pray for it.

The little girl sat in front of him, but always until
that morning had kept the gingerbread out of sight.
Now, however, when he finished his prayer and looked
up, a small morsel of the precious food lay in front
of him. Perhaps the little girl could no longer
stand that hungry look in his eyes. Possibly
she had heard his petition; at all events his prayer
bore fruit and his faith at that moment would have
moved Holliday’s Hill. He decided to pray
for everything he wanted, but when he tried the gingerbread
supplication next morning it had no result. Grieved,
but still unshaken, he tried next morning again; still
no gingerbread; and when a third and fourth effort
left him hungry he grew despairing and silent, and
wore the haggard face of doubt. His mother said:

“What’s the matter, Sammy; are you sick?”

“No,” he said, “but I don’t
believe in saying prayers any more, and I’m
never going to do it again.”

“Why, Sammy, what in the world has happened?”
she asked, anxiously. Then he broke down and
cried on her lap and told her, for it was a serious
thing in that day openly to repudiate faith. Jane
Clemens gathered him to her heart and comforted him.

“I’ll make you a whole pan of gingerbread,
better than that,” she said, “and school
will soon be out, too, and you can go back to Uncle
John’s farm.”

And so passed and ended Little Sam’s first school-days.

X

EARLY VICISSITUDE AND SORROW

Page 24

Prosperity came laggingly enough to the Clemens household.
The year 1840 brought hard times: the business
venture paid little or no return; law practice was
not much more remunerative. Judge Clemens ran
for the office of justice of the peace and was elected,
but fees were neither large nor frequent. By
the end of the year it became necessary to part with
Jennie, the slave-girl—­a grief to all of
them, for they were fond of her in spite of her wilfulness,
and she regarded them as “her family.”
She was tall, well formed, nearly black, and brought
a good price. A Methodist minister in Hannibal
sold a negro child at the same time to another minister
who took it to his home farther South. As the
steamboat moved away from the landing the child’s
mother stood at the water’s edge, shrieking
her anguish. We are prone to consider these things
harshly now, when slavery has been dead for nearly
half a century, but it was a sacred institution then,
and to sell a child from its mother was little more
than to sell to-day a calf from its lowing dam.
One could be sorry, of course, in both instances,
but necessity or convenience are matters usually considered
before sentiment. Mark Twain once said of his
mother:

“Kind-hearted and compassionate as she was,
I think she was not conscious that slavery was a bald,
grotesque, and unwarranted usurpation. She had
never heard it assailed in any pulpit, but had heard
it defended and sanctified in a thousand. As
far as her experience went, the wise, the good, and
the holy were unanimous in the belief that slavery
was right, righteous, sacred, the peculiar pet of
the Deity, and a condition which the slave himself
ought to be daily and nightly thankful for.”

Yet Jane Clemens must have had qualms at times—­vague,
unassembled doubts that troubled her spirit.
After Jennie was gone a little black chore-boy was
hired from his owner, who had bought him on the east
shore of Maryland and brought him to that remote Western
village, far from family and friends.

He was a cheery spirit in spite of that, and gentle,
but very noisy. All day he went about singing,
whistling, and whooping until his noise became monotonous,
maddening. One day Little Sam said:

“Ma—­[that was the Southern term]—­,make
Sandy stop singing all the time. It’s awful.”

Tears suddenly came into his mother’s eyes.

“Poor thing! He is sold away from his home.
When he sings it shows maybe he is not remembering.
When he’s still I am afraid he is thinking,
and I can’t bear it.”

Yet any one in that day who advanced the idea of freeing
the slaves was held in abhorrence. An abolitionist
was something to despise, to stone out of the community.
The children held the name in horror, as belonging
to something less than human; something with claws,
perhaps, and a tail.

Page 25

The money received for the sale of Jennie made judge
Clemens easier for a time. Business appears to
have improved, too, and he was tided through another
year during which he seems to have made payments on
an expensive piece of real estate on Hill and Main
streets. This property, acquired in November,
1839, meant the payment of some seven thousand dollars,
and was a credit purchase, beyond doubt. It was
well rented, but the tenants did not always pay; and
presently a crisis came—­a descent of creditors
—­and John: Clemens at forty-four found
himself without business and without means. He
offered everything—­his cow, his household
furniture, even his forks and spoons—­to
his creditors, who protested that he must not strip
himself. They assured him that they admired his
integrity so much they would aid him to resume business;
but when he went to St. Louis to lay in a stock of
goods he was coldly met, and the venture came to nothing.

He now made a trip to Tennessee in the hope of collecting
some old debts and to raise money on the Tennessee
land. He took along a negro man named Charlie,
whom he probably picked up for a small sum, hoping
to make something through his disposal in a better
market. The trip was another failure. The
man who owed him a considerable sum of money was solvent,
but pleaded hard times:

It seems so very hard upon him—­[John
Clemens wrote home]—­to pay such a sum
that I could not have the conscience to hold him to
it. . . I still have Charlie. The highest
price I had offered for him in New Orleans was
$50, in Vicksburg $40. After performing the journey
to Tennessee, I expect to sell him for whatever he
will bring.

I do not know what I can commence for
a business in the spring. My brain is constantly
on the rack with the study, and I can’t relieve
myself of it. The future, taking its completion
from the state of my health or mind, is alternately
beaming in sunshine or over- shadowed with clouds;
but mostly cloudy, as you may suppose. I want
bodily exercise—­some constant and active
employment, in the first place; and, in the next
place, I want to be paid for it, if possible.

This letter is dated January 7, 1842. He returned
without any financial success, and obtained employment
for a time in a commission-house on the levee.
The proprietor found some fault one day, and Judge
Clemens walked out of the premises. On his way
home he stopped in a general store, kept by a man
named Sehns, to make some purchases. When he asked
that these be placed on account, Selms hesitated.
Judge Clemens laid down a five-dollar gold piece,
the last money he possessed in the world, took the
goods, and never entered the place again.

When Jane Clemens reproached him for having made the
trip to Tennessee, at a cost of two hundred dollars,
so badly needed at this time, he only replied gently
that he had gone for what he believed to be the best.

Page 26

“I am not able to dig in the streets,”
he added, and Orion, who records this, adds:

“I can see yet the hopeless expression of his
face.”

During a former period of depression, such as this,
death had come into the Clemens home. It came
again now. Little Benjamin, a sensitive, amiable
boy of ten, one day sickened, and died within a week,
May 12, 1842. He was a favorite child and his
death was a terrible blow. Little Sam long remembered
the picture of his parents’ grief; and Orion
recalls that they kissed each other, something hitherto
unknown.

Judge Clemens went back to his law and judicial practice.
Mrs. Clemens decided to take a few boarders.
Orion, by this time seventeen and a very good journeyman
printer, obtained a place in St. Louis to aid in the
family support.

The tide of fortune having touched low-water mark,
the usual gentle stage of improvement set in.
Times grew better in Hannibal after those first two
or three years; legal fees became larger and more frequent.
Within another two years judge Clemens appears to
have been in fairly hopeful circumstances again—­able
at least to invest some money in silkworm culture
and lose it, also to buy a piano for Pamela, and to
build a modest house on the Hill Street property,
which a rich St. Louis cousin, James Clemens, had
preserved for him. It was the house which is known
today as the “Mark Twain Home.”—­[’This
house, in 1911, was bought by Mr. and Mrs. George
A. Mahan, and presented to Hannibal for a memorial
museum.]—­Near it, toward the corner of Main
Street, was his office, and here he dispensed law
and justice in a manner which, if it did not bring
him affluence, at least won for him the respect of
the entire community. One example will serve:

Next to his office was a stone-cutter’s shop.
One day the proprietor, Dave Atkinson, got into a
muss with one “Fighting” MacDonald, and
there was a tremendous racket. Judge Clemens
ran out and found the men down, punishing each other
on the pavement.

“I command the peace!” he shouted, as
he came up to them.

No one paid the least attention.

“I command the peace!” he shouted again,
still louder, but with no result.

A stone-cutter’s mallet lay there, handy.
Judge Clemens seized it and, leaning over the combatants,
gave the upper one, MacDonald, a smart blow on the
head.

“I command the peace!” he said, for the
third time, and struck a considerably smarter blow.

That settled it. The second blow was of the sort
that made MacDonald roll over, and peace ensued.
Judge Clemens haled both men into his court, fined
them, and collected his fee. Such enterprise in
the cause of justice deserved prompt reward.

XI

DAYS OF EDUCATION

The Clemens family had made one or two moves since
its arrival in Hannibal, but the identity of these
temporary residences and the period of occupation
of each can no longer be established. Mark Twain
once said:

Page 27

“In 1843 my father caught me in a lie.
It is not this fact that gives me the date, but the
house we lived in. We were there only a year.”

We may believe it was the active result of that lie
that fixed his memory of the place, for his father
seldom punished him. When he did, it was a thorough
and satisfactory performance.

It was about the period of moving into the new house
(1844) that the Tom Sawyer days—­that is
to say, the boyhood of Samuel Clemens—­may
be said to have begun. Up to that time he was
just Little Sam, a child—­wild, and mischievous,
often exasperating, but still a child—­a
delicate little lad to be worried over, mothered,
or spanked and put to bed. Now, at nine, he had
acquired health, with a sturdy ability to look out
for himself, as boys will, in a community like that,
especially where the family is rather larger than
the income and there is still a younger child to claim
a mother’s protecting care. So “Sam,”
as they now called him, “grew up” at nine,
and was full of knowledge for his years. Not
that he was old in spirit or manner—­he was
never that, even to his death—­but he had
learned a great number of things, mostly of a kind
not acquired at school.

They were not always of a pleasant kind; they were
likely to be of a kind startling to a boy, even terrifying.
Once Little Sam—­he was still Little Sam,
then—­saw an old man shot down on the main
street, at noonday. He saw them carry him home,
lay him on the bed, and spread on his breast an open
family Bible which looked as heavy as an anvil.
He though, if he could only drag that great burden
away, the poor, old dying man would not breathe so
heavily. He saw a young emigrant stabbed with
a bowie-knife by a drunken comrade, and noted the
spurt of life-blood that followed; he saw two young
men try to kill their uncle, one holding him while
the other snapped repeatedly an Allen revolver which
failed to go off. Then there was the drunken
rowdy who proposed to raid the “Welshman’s”
house one dark threatening night—­he saw
that, too. A widow and her one daughter lived
there, and the ruffian woke the whole village with
his coarse challenges and obscenities. Sam Clemens
and a boon companion, John Briggs, went up there to
look and listen. The man was at the gate, and
the warren were invisible in the shadow of the dark
porch. The boys heard the elder woman’s
voice warning the man that she had a loaded gun, and
that she would kill him if he stayed where he was.
He replied with a ribald tirade, and she warned that
she would count ten-that if he remained a second longer
she would fire. She began slowly and counted
up to five, with him laughing and jeering. At
six he grew silent, but he did not go. She counted
on: seven—­eight—­nine—­The
boys watching from the dark roadside felt their hearts
stop. There was a long pause, then the final
count, followed a second later by a gush of flame.
The man dropped, his breast riddled. At the same
instant the thunderstorm that had been gathering broke
loose. The boys fled wildly, believing that Satan
himself had arrived to claim the lost soul.

Page 28

Many such instances happened in a town like that in
those days. And there were events incident to
slavery. He saw a slave struck down and killed
with a piece of slag for a trifling offense. He
saw an abolitionist attacked by a mob, and they would
have lynched him had not a Methodist minister defended
him on a plea that he must be crazy. He did not
remember, in later years, that he had ever seen a slave
auction, but he added:

“I am suspicious that it is because the thing
was a commonplace spectacle, and not an uncommon or
impressive one. I do vividly remember seeing
a dozen black men and women chained together lying
in a group on the pavement, waiting shipment to a
Southern slave-market. They had the saddest faces
I ever saw.”

It is not surprising that a boy would gather a store
of human knowledge amid such happenings as these.
They were wild, disturbing things. They got into
his dreams and made him fearful when he woke in the
middle of the night. He did not then regard them
as an education. In some vague way he set them
down as warnings, or punishments, designed to give
him a taste for a better life. He felt that it
was his own conscience that made these things torture
him. That was his mother’s idea, and he
had a high respect for her moral opinions, also for
her courage. Among other things, he had seen
her one day defy a vicious devil of a Corsican—­a
common terror in the town-who was chasing his grown
daughter with a heavy rope in his hand, declaring
he would wear it out on her. Cautious citizens
got out of her way, but Jane Clemens opened her door
wide to the refugee, and then, instead of rushing
in and closing it, spread her arms across it, barring
the way. The man swore and threatened her with
the rope, but she did not flinch or show any sign
of fear. She stood there and shamed him and derided
him and defied him until he gave up the rope and slunk
off, crestfallen and conquered. Any one who could
do that must have a perfect conscience, Sam thought.
In the fearsome darkness he would say his prayers,
especially when a thunderstorm was coming, and vow
to begin a better life in the morning. He detested
Sunday-school as much as day-school, and once Orion,
who was moral and religious, had threatened to drag
him there by the collar; but as the thunder got louder
Sam decided that he loved Sunday-school and would go
the next Sunday without being invited.

Fortunately there were pleasanter things than these.
There were picnics sometimes, and ferry-boat excursions.
Once there was a great Fourth-of-July celebration
at which it was said a real Revolutionary soldier
was to be present. Some one had discovered him
living alone seven or eight miles in the country.
But this feature proved a disappointment; for when
the day came and he was triumphantly brought in he
turned out to be a Hessian, and was allowed to walk
home.

The hills and woods around Hannibal where, with his
playmates, he roamed almost at will were never disappointing.
There was the cave with its marvels; there was Bear
Creek, where, after repeated accidents, he had learned
to swim. It had cost him heavily to learn to swim.
He had seen two playmates drown; also, time and again
he had, himself, been dragged ashore more dead than
alive, once by a slave-girl, another time by a slaveman—­Neal
Champ, of the Pavey Hotel. In the end he had conquered;
he could swim better than any boy in town of his age.

Page 29

It was the river that meant more to him than all the
rest. Its charm was permanent. It was the
path of adventure, the gateway to the world. The
river with its islands, its great slow-moving rafts,
its marvelous steamboats that were like fairyland,
its stately current swinging to the sea! He would
sit by it for hours and dream. He would venture
out on it in a surreptitiously borrowed boat when
he was barely strong enough to lift an oar out of
the water. He learned to know all its moods and
phases. He felt its kinship. In some occult
way he may have known it as his prototype—­that
resistless tide of life with its ever-changing sweep,
its shifting shores, its depths, its shadows, its gorgeous
sunset hues, its solemn and tranquil entrance to the
sea.

His hunger for the life aboard the steamers became
a passion. To be even the humblest employee of
one of those floating enchantments would be enough;
to be an officer would be to enter heaven; to be a
pilot was to be a god.

“You can hardly imagine what it meant,”
he reflected once, “to a boy in those days,
shut in as we were, to see those steamboats pass up
and down, and never to take a trip on them.”

He had reached the mature age of nine when he could
endure this no longer. One day, when the big
packet came down and stopped at Hannibal, he slipped
aboard and crept under one of the boats on the upper
deck. Presently the signal-bells rang, the steamboat
backed away and swung into midstream; he was really
going at last. He crept from beneath the boat
and sat looking out over the water and enjoying the
scenery. Then it began to rain—­a terrific
downpour. He crept back under the boat, but his
legs were outside, and one of the crew saw him.
So he was taken down into the cabin and at the next
stop set ashore. It was the town of Louisiana,
and there were Lampton relatives there who took him
home. Jane Clemens declared that his father had
got to take him in hand; which he did, doubtless impressing
the adventure on him in the usual way. These
were all educational things; then there was always
the farm, where entertainment was no longer a matter
of girl-plays and swings, with a colored nurse following
about, but of manlier sports with his older boy cousins,
who had a gun and went hunting with the men for squirrels
and partridges by day, for coons and possums by night.
Sometimes the little boy had followed the hunters
all night long and returned with them through the
sparkling and fragrant morning fresh, hungry, and triumphant
just in time for breakfast.

So it is no wonder that at nine he was no longer “Little
Sam,” but Sam Clemens, quite mature and self-dependent,
with a wide knowledge of men and things and a variety
of accomplishments. He had even learned to smoke—­a
little—­out there on the farm, and had tried
tobacco-chewing, though that was a failure. He
had been stung to this effort by a big girl at a school
which, with his cousin Puss, he sometimes briefly
attended.

Page 30

“Do you use terbacker?” the big girl had
asked, meaning did he chew it.

“No,” he said, abashed at the confession.

“Haw!” she cried to the other scholars;
“here’s a boy that can’t chaw terbacker.”

Degraded and ashamed, he tried to correct his fault,
but it only made him very ill; and he did not try
again.

He had also acquired the use of certain strong, expressive
words, and used them, sometimes, when his mother was
safely distant. He had an impression that she
would “skin him alive” if she heard him
swear. His education had doubtful spots in it,
but it had provided wisdom.

He was not a particularly attractive lad. He
was not tall for his years, and his head was somewhat
too large for his body. He had a “great
ruck” of light, sandy hair which he plastered
down to keep it from curling; keen blue-gray eyes,
and rather large features. Still, he had a fair,
delicate complexion, when it was not blackened by grime
or tan; a gentle, winning manner; a smile that, with
his slow, measured way of speaking, made him a favorite
with his companions. He did not speak much, and
his mental attainments were not highly regarded; but,
for some reason, whenever he did speak every playmate
in hearing stopped whatever he was doing and listened.
Perhaps it would be a plan for a new game or lark;
perhaps it was something droll; perhaps it was just
a commonplace remark that his peculiar drawl made
amusing. Whatever it was, they considered it
worth while. His mother always referred to his
slow fashion of speaking as “Sammy’s long
talk.” Her own speech was still more deliberate,
but she seemed not to notice it. Henry—­a
much handsomer lad and regarded as far more promising—­did
not have it. He was a lovable, obedient little
fellow whom the mischievous Sam took delight in teasing.
For this and other reasons the latter’s punishments
were frequent enough, perhaps not always deserved.
Sometimes he charged his mother with partiality.
He would say:

“Yes, no matter what it is, I am always the
one to get punished”; and his mother would answer:

“Well, Sam, if you didn’t deserve it for
that, you did for something else.”

Henry Clemens became the Sid of Tom Sawyer, though
Henry was in every way a finer character than Sid.
His brother Sam always loved him, and fought for him
oftener than with him.

With the death of Benjamin Clemens, Henry and Sam
were naturally drawn much closer together, though
Sam could seldom resist the temptation of tormenting
Henry. A schoolmate, George Butler (he was a nephew
of General Butler and afterward fought bravely in
the Civil War), had a little blue suit with a leather
belt to match, and was the envy of all. Mrs.
Clemens finally made Sam and Henry suits of blue cotton
velvet, and the next Sunday, after various services
were over, the two sauntered about, shedding glory
for a time, finally going for a stroll in the woods.
They walked along properly enough, at first, then just

Page 31

ahead Sam spied the stump of a newly cut tree, and
with a wild whooping impulse took a running leap over
it. There were splinters on the stump where the
tree had broken away, but he cleared them neatly.
Henry wanted to match the performance, but was afraid
to try, so Sam dared him. He kept daring him
until Henry was goaded to the attempt. He cleared
the stump, but the highest splinters caught the slack
of his little blue trousers, and the cloth gave way.
He escaped injury, but the precious trousers were
damaged almost beyond repair. Sam, with a boy’s
heartlessness, was fairly rolling on the ground with
laughter at Henry’s appearance.

“Cotton-tail rabbit!” he shouted.
“Cotton-tail rabbit!” while Henry, weeping,
set out for home by a circuitous and unfrequented road.
Let us hope, if there was punishment for this mishap,
that it fell in the proper locality.

These two brothers were of widely different temperament.
Henry, even as a little boy, was sturdy, industrious,
and dependable. Sam was volatile and elusive;
his industry of an erratic kind. Once his father
set him to work with a hatchet to remove some plaster.
He hacked at it for a time well enough, then lay down
on the floor of the room and threw his hatchet at
such areas of the plaster as were not in easy reach.
Henry would have worked steadily at a task like that
until the last bit was removed and the room swept
clean.

The home incidents in ‘Tom Sawyer’, most
of them, really happened. Sam Clemens did clod
Henry for getting him into trouble about the colored
thread with which he sewed his shirt when he came home
from swimming; he did inveigle a lot of boys into
whitewashing, a fence for him; he did give Pain-killer
to Peter, the cat. There was a cholera scare that
year, and Pain-killer was regarded as a preventive.
Sam had been ordered to take it liberally, and perhaps
thought Peter too should be safeguarded. As for
escaping punishment for his misdeeds in the manner
described in that book, this was a daily matter, and
the methods adapted themselves to the conditions.
In the introduction to Tom Sawyer Mark Twain confesses
to the general truth of the history, and to the reality
of its characters. “Huck Finn was drawn
from life,” he tells us. “Tom Sawyer
also, but not from an individual—­he is a
combination of the characteristics of three boys whom
I knew.”

The three boys were—­himself, chiefly, and
in a lesser degree John Briggs and Will Bowen.
John Briggs was also the original of Joe Harper in
that book. As for Huck Finn, his original was
Tom Blankenship, neither elaborated nor qualified.

There were several of the Blankenships: there
was old Ben, the father, who had succeeded “General”
Gains as the town drunkard; young Ben, the eldest
son—­a hard case with certain good traits;
and Tom—­that is to say, Huck—­who
was just as he is described in Tom Sawyer: a ruin
of rags, a river-rat, an irresponsible bit of human
drift, kind of heart and possessing that priceless

Page 32

boon, absolute unaccountability of conduct to any
living soul. He could came and go as he chose;
he never had to work or go to school; he could do
all things, good or bad, that the other boys longed
to do and were forbidden. He represented to them
the very embodiment of liberty, and his general knowledge
of important matters, such as fishing, hunting, trapping,
and all manner of signs and spells and hoodoos and
incantations, made him immensely valuable as a companion.
The fact that his society was prohibited gave it a
vastly added charm.

The Blankenships picked up a precarious living fishing
and hunting, and lived at first in a miserable house
of bark, under a tree, but later moved into quite
a pretentious building back of the new Clemens home
on Hill Street. It was really an old barn of
a place—­poor and ramshackle even then;
but now, more than sixty years later, a part of it
is still standing. The siding of the part that
stands is of black walnut, which must have been very
plentiful in that long-ago time. Old drunken Ben
Blankenship never dreamed that pieces of his house
would be carried off as relics because of the literary
fame of his son Tom—­a fame founded on irresponsibility
and inconsequence. Orion Clemens, who was concerned
with missionary work about this time, undertook to
improve the Blankenships spiritually. Sam adopted
them, outright, and took them to his heart. He
was likely to be there at any hour of the day, and
he and Tom had cat-call signals at night which would
bring him out on the back single-story roof, and down
a little arbor and flight of steps, to the group of
boon companions which, besides Tom, included John Briggs,
the Bowen boys, Will Pitts, and one or two other congenial
spirits. They were not vicious boys; they were
not really bad boys; they were only mischievous, fun-loving
boys-thoughtless, and rather disregardful of the comforts
and the rights of others.

XII

TOM SAWYER’S BAND

They ranged from Holliday’s Hill on the north
to the Cave on the south, and over the fields and
through all the woods about. They navigated the
river from Turtle Island to Glasscock’s Island
(now Pearl, or Tom Sawyer’s Island), and far
below; they penetrated the wilderness of the Illinois
shore. They could run like wild turkeys and swim
like ducks; they could handle a boat as if born in
one. No orchard or melon patch was entirely safe
from them; no dog or slave patrol so vigilant that
they did not sooner or later elude it. They borrowed
boats when their owners were not present. Once
when they found this too much trouble, they decided
to own a boat, and one Sunday gave a certain borrowed
craft a coat of red paint (formerly it had been green),
and secluded it for a season up Bear Creek. They
borrowed the paint also, and the brush, though they
carefully returned these the same evening about nightfall,
so the painter could have them Monday morning.
Tom Blankenship rigged up a sail for the new craft,
and Sam Clemens named it Cecilia, after which they
didn’t need to borrow boats any more, though
the owner of it did; and he sometimes used to observe
as he saw it pass that, if it had been any other color
but red, he would have sworn it was his.

Page 33

Some of their expeditions were innocent enough.
They often cruised up to Turtle Island, about two
miles above Hannibal, and spent the day feasting.
You could have loaded a car with turtles and their
eggs up there, and there were quantities of mussels
and plenty of fish. Fishing and swimming were
their chief pastimes, with general marauding for adventure.
Where the railroad-bridge now ends on the Missouri
side was their favorite swimming-hole—­that
and along Bear Creek, a secluded limpid water with
special interests of its own. Sometimes at evening
they swam across to Glasscock’s Island—­the
rendezvous of Tom Sawyer’s “Black Avengers”
and the hiding-place of Huck and Nigger Jim; then,
when they had frolicked on the sand-bar at the head
of the island for an hour or more, they would swim
back in the dusk, a distance of half a mile, breasting
the strong, steady Mississippi current without exhaustion
or fear. They could swim all day, likely enough,
those graceless young scamps. Once—­though
this was considerably later, when he was sixteen —­Sam
Clemens swam across to the Illinois side, and then
turned and swam back again without landing, a distance
of at least two miles, as he had to go. He was
seized with a cramp on the return trip. His legs
became useless, and he was obliged to make the remaining
distance with his arms. It was a hardy life they
led, and it is not recorded that they ever did any
serious damage, though they narrowly missed it sometimes.

One of their Sunday pastimes was to climb Holliday’s
Hill and roll down big stones, to frighten the people
who were driving to church. Holliday’s
Hill above the road was steep; a stone once started
would go plunging and leaping down and bound across
the road with the deadly swiftness of a twelve-inch
shell. The boys would get a stone poised, then
wait until they saw a team approaching, and, calculating
the distance, would give it a start. Dropping
down behind the bushes, they would watch the dramatic
effect upon the church-goers as the great missile shot
across the road a few yards before them. This
was Homeric sport, but they carried it too far.
Stones that had a habit of getting loose so numerously
on Sundays and so rarely on other days invited suspicion,
and the “Patterollers” (river patrol—­a
kind of police of those days) were put on the watch.
So the boys found other diversions until the Patterollers
did not watch any more; then they planned a grand
coup that would eclipse anything before attempted
in the stone-rolling line.

A rock about the size of an omnibus was lying up there,
in a good position to go down hill, once, started.
They decided it would be a glorious thing to see that
great boulder go smashing down, a hundred yards or
so in front of some unsuspecting and peaceful-minded
church-goer. Quarrymen were getting out rock not
far away, and left their picks and shovels over Sundays.
The boys borrowed these, and went to work to undermine
the big stone. It was a heavier job than they
had counted on, but they worked faithfully, Sunday
after Sunday. If their parents had wanted them
to work like that, they would have thought they were
being killed.

Page 34

Finally one Sunday, while they were digging, it suddenly
got loose and started down. They were not quite
ready for it. Nobody was coming but an old colored
man in a cart, so it was going to be wasted. It
was not quite wasted, however. They had planned
for a thrilling result; and there was thrill enough
while it lasted. In the first place, the stone
nearly caught Will Bowen when it started. John
Briggs had just that moment quit digging and handed
Will the pick. Will was about to step into the
excavation when Sam Clemens, who was already there,
leaped out with a yell:

“Look out, boys, she’s coming!”

She came. The huge stone kept to the ground at
first, then, gathering a wild momentum, it went bounding
into the air. About half-way down the hill it
struck a tree several inches through and cut it clean
off. This turned its course a little, and the
negro in the cart, who heard the noise, saw it come
crashing in his direction and made a wild effort to
whip up his horse. It was also headed toward a
cooper-shop across the road. The boys watched
it with growing interest. It made longer leaps
with every bound, and whenever it struck the fragments
the dust would fly. They were certain it would
demolish the negro and destroy the cooper-shop.
The shop was empty, it being Sunday, but the rest of
the catastrophe would invite close investigation,
with results. They wanted to fly, but they could
not move until they saw the rock land. It was
making mighty leaps now, and the terrified negro had
managed to get directly in its path. They stood
holding their breath, their mouths open. Then
suddenly they could hardly believe their eyes; the
boulder struck a projection a distance above the road,
and with a mighty bound sailed clear over the negro
and his mule and landed in the soft dirt beyond-only
a fragment striking the shop, damaging but not wrecking
it. Half buried in the ground, that boulder lay
there for nearly forty years; then it was blasted
up for milling purposes. It was the last rock
the boys ever rolled down. They began to suspect
that the sport was not altogether safe.

Sometimes the boys needed money, which was not easy
to get in those days. On one occasion of this
sort, Tom Blankenship had the skin of a coon he had
captured, which represented the only capital in the
crowd. At Selms’s store on Wild Cat corner
the coonskin would bring ten cents, but that was not
enough. They arranged a plan which would make
it pay a good deal more than that. Selins’s
window was open, it being summer-time, and his pile
of pelts was pretty handy. Huck—­that
is to say, Tom—­went in the front door and
sold the skin for ten cents to Selms, who tossed it
back on the pile. Tom came back with the money
and after a reasonable period went around to the open
window, crawled in, got the coonskin, and sold it
to Selms again. He did this several times that
afternoon; then John Pierce, Selins’s clerk,
said:

“Look here, Selms, there is something wrong
about this. That boy has been selling us coonskins
all the afternoon.”

Page 35

Selms went to his pile of pelts. There were several
sheepskins and some cowhides, but only one coonskin—­the
one he had that moment bought. Selms himself
used to tell this story as a great joke.

Perhaps it is not adding to Mark Twain’s reputation
to say that the boy Sam Clemens—­a pretty
small boy, a good deal less than twelve at this time—­was
the leader of this unhallowed band; yet any other record
would be less than historic. If the band had
a leader, it was he. They were always ready to
listen to him—­they would even stop fishing
to do that —­and to follow his projects.
They looked to him for ideas and organization, whether
the undertaking was to be real or make-believe.
When they played “Bandit” or “Pirate”
or “Indian,” Sam Clemens was always chief;
when they became real raiders it is recorded that he
was no less distinguished. Like Tom Sawyer, he
loved the glare and trappings of leadership.
When the Christian Sons of Temperance came along with
a regalia, and a red sash that carried with it rank
and the privilege of inventing pass-words, the gaud
of these things got into his eyes, and he gave up
smoking (which he did rather gingerly) and swearing
(which he did only under heavy excitement), also liquor
(though he had never tasted it yet), and marched with
the newly washed and pure in heart for a full month—­a
month of splendid leadership and servitude. Then
even the red sash could not hold him in bondage.
He looked up Tom Blankenship and said:

“Say, Tom, I’m blamed tired of this!
Let’s go somewhere and smoke!” Which must
have been a good deal of a sacrifice, for the uniform
was a precious thing.

Limelight and the center of the stage was a passion
of Sam Clemens’s boyhood, a love of the spectacular
that never wholly died. It seems almost a pity
that in those far-off barefoot old days he could not
have looked down the years to a time when, with the
world at his feet, venerable Oxford should clothe
him in a scarlet gown.

He could not by any chance have dreamed of that stately
honor. His ambitions did not lie in the direction
of mental achievement. It is true that now and
then, on Friday at school, he read a composition, one
of which—­a personal burlesque on certain
older boys—­came near resulting in bodily
damage. But any literary ambition he may have
had in those days was a fleeting thing. His permanent
dream was to be a pirate, or a pilot, or a bandit,
or a trapper-scout; something gorgeous and active,
where his word—­his nod, even—­constituted
sufficient law. The river kept the pilot ambition
always fresh, and the cave supplied a background for
those other things.

Page 36

The cave was an enduring and substantial joy.
It was a real cave, not merely a hole, but a subterranean
marvel of deep passages and vaulted chambers that
led away into bluffs and far down into the earth’s
black silences, even below the river, some said.
For Sam Clemens the cave had a fascination that never
faded. Other localities and diversions might
pall, but any mention of the cave found him always
eager and ready for the three-mile walk or pull that
brought them to its mystic door. With its long
corridors, its royal chambers hung with stalactites,
its remote hiding-places, its possibilities as the
home of a gallant outlaw band, it contained everything
that a romantic boy could love or long for. In
Tom Sawyer Indian Joe dies in the cave. He did
not die there in real life, but was lost there once,
and was living on bats when they found him. He
was a dissolute reprobate, and when, one night, he
did die there came up a thunder-storm so terrific
that Sam Clemens at home and in bed was certain that
Satan had come in person for the half-breed’s
wicked soul. He covered his head and said his
prayers industriously, in the fear that the evil one
might conclude to save another trip by taking him along,
too.

The treasure-digging adventure in the book had a foundation
in fact. There was a tradition concerning some
French trappers who long before had established a
trading-post two miles above Hannibal, on what is called
the “bay.” It is said that, while
one of these trappers was out hunting, Indians made
a raid on the post and massacred the others. The
hunter on returning found his comrades killed and
scalped, but the Indians had failed to find the treasure
which was buried in a chest. He left it there,
swam across to Illinois, and made his way to St. Louis,
where he told of the massacre and the burial of the,
chest of gold. Then he started to raise a party
to go back for it, but was taken sick and died.
Later some men came up from St. Louis looking for the
chest. They did not find it, but they told the
circumstances, and afterward a good many people tried
to find the gold.

Tom Blankenship one morning came to Sam Clemens and
John Briggs and said he was going to dig up the treasure.
He said he had dreamed just where it was, and said
if they would go with him and dig he would divide up.
The boys had great faith in dreams, especially Tom’s
dreams. Tom’s unlimited freedom gave him
a large importance in their eyes. The dreams
of a boy like that were pretty sure to mean something.
They followed Tom to the place with some shovels and
a pick, and he showed them where to dig. Then
he sat down under the shade of a papaw-tree and gave
orders.

They dug nearly all day. Now and then they stopped
to rest, and maybe to wonder a little why Tom didn’t
dig some himself; but, of course, he had done the
dreaming, which entitled him to an equal share.

Page 37

They did not find it that day, and when they went
back next morning they took two long iron rods; these
they would push and drive into the ground until they
struck something hard. Then they would dig down
to see what it was, but it never turned out to be
money. That night the boys declared they would
not dig any more. But Tom had another dream.
He dreamed the gold was exactly under the, little
papaw-tree. This sounded so circumstantial that
they went back and dug another day. It was hot
weather too, August, and that night they were nearly
dead. Even Tom gave it up, then. He said
there was something about the way they dug, but he
never offered to do any digging himself.

This differs considerably from the digging incident
in the book, but it gives us an idea of the respect
the boys had for the ragamuffin original of Huckleberry
Finn.—­[Much of the detail in this chapter
was furnished to the writer by John Briggs shortly
before his death in 1907.]—­Tom Blankenship’s
brother, Ben, was also drawn upon for that creation,
at least so far as one important phase of Huck’s
character is concerned. He was considerably older,
as well as more disreputable, than Tom. He was
inclined to torment the boys by tying knots in their
clothes when they went swimming, or by throwing mud
at them when they wanted to come out, and they had
no deep love for him. But somewhere in Ben Blankenship
there was a fine generous strain of humanity that provided
Mark Twain with that immortal episode in the story
of Huck Finn—­in sheltering the Nigger Jim.

This is the real story:

A slave ran off from Monroe County, Missouri, and
got across the river into Illinois. Ben used
to fish and hunt over there in the swamps, and one
day found him. It was considered a most worthy
act in those days to return a runaway slave; in fact,
it was a crime not to do it. Besides, there was
for this one a reward of fifty dollars, a fortune to
ragged outcast Ben Blankenship. That money and
the honor he could acquire must have been tempting
to the waif, but it did not outweigh his human sympathy.
Instead of giving him up and claiming the reward, Ben
kept the runaway over there in the marshes all summer.
The negro would fish and Ben would carry him scraps
of other food. Then, by and by, it leaked out.
Some wood-choppers went on a hunt for the fugitive,
and chased him to what was called “Bird Slough.”
There trying to cross a drift he was drowned.

In the book, the author makes Huck’s struggle
a psychological one between conscience and the law,
on one side, and sympathy on the other. With Ben
Blankenship the struggle—­if there was a
struggle—­was probably between sympathy
and cupidity. He would care very little for conscience
and still less for law. His sympathy with the
runaway, however, would be large and elemental, and
it must have been very large to offset the lure of
that reward.

Page 38

There was a gruesome sequel to this incident.
Some days following the drowning of the runaway, Sam
Clemens, John Briggs, and the Bowen boys went to the
spot and were pushing the drift about, when suddenly
the negro rose before them, straight and terrible,
about half his length out of the water. He had
gone down feet foremost, and the loosened drift had
released him. The boys did not stop to investigate.
They thought he was after them and flew in wild terror,
never stopping until they reached human habitation.

How many gruesome experiences there appear to have
been in those early days! In ‘The Innocents
Abroad’ Mark Twain tells of the murdered man
he saw one night in his father’s office.
The man’s name was McFarlane. He had been
stabbed that day in the old Hudson-McFarlane feud and
carried in there to die. Sam Clemens and John
Briggs had run away from school and had been sky larking
all that day, and knew nothing of the affair.
Sam decided that his father’s office was safer
for him than to face his mother, who was probably
sitting up, waiting. He tells us how he lay on
the lounge, and how a shape on the floor gradually
resolved itself into the outlines of a man; how a
square of moonlight from the window approached it
and gradually revealed the dead face and the ghastly
stabbed breast.

“I went out of there,” he says. “I
do not say that I went away in any sort of a hurry,
but I simply went; that is sufficient. I went
out of the window, and I carried the sash along with
me. I did not need the sash, but it was handier
to take it than to, leave it, and so I took it.
I was not scared, but I was considerably agitated.”

He was not yet twelve, for his father was no longer
alive when the boy reached that age. Certainly
these were disturbing, haunting things. Then
there was the case of the drunken tramp in the calaboose
to whom the boys kind-heartedly enough carried food
and tobacco. Sam Clemens spent some of his precious
money to buy the tramp a box of Lucifer matches—­a
brand new invention then, scarce and high. The
tramp started a fire with the matches and burned down
the calaboose, himself in it. For weeks the boy
was tortured, awake and in his dreams, by the thought
that if he had not carried the man the matches the
tragedy could not have happened. Remorse was
always Samuel Clemens’s surest punishment.
To his last days on earth he never outgrew its pangs.

What a number of things crowded themselves into a
few brief years! It is not easy to curtail these
boyhood adventures of Sam Clemens and his scapegrace
friends, but one might go on indefinitely with their
mad doings. They were an unpromising lot.
Ministers and other sober-minded citizens freely prophesied
sudden and violent ends for them, and considered them
hardly worth praying for. They must have proven
a disappointing lot to those prophets. The Bowen
boys became fine river-pilots; Will Pitts was in due
time a leading merchant and bank director; John Briggs
grew into a well-to-do and highly respected farmer;
even Huck Finn—­that is to say, Tom Blankenship—­is
reputed to have ranked as an honored citizen and justice
of the peace in a Western town. But in those
days they were a riotous, fun-loving band with little
respect for order and even less for ordinance.

Page 39

XIII

THE GENTLER SIDE

His associations were not all of that lawless breed.
At his school (he had sampled several places of learning,
and was now at Mr. Cross’s on the Square) were
a number of less adventurous, even if not intrinsically
better playmates. There was George Robards, the
Latin scholar, and John, his brother, a handsome boy,
who rode away at last with his father into the sunset,
to California, his golden curls flying in the wind.
And there was Jimmy McDaniel, a kind-hearted boy whose
company was worth while, because his father was a
confectioner, and he used to bring candy and cake
to school. Also there was Buck Brown, a rival
speller, and John Meredith, the doctor’s son,
and John Garth, who was one day to marry little Helen
Kercheval, and in the end would be remembered and honored
with a beautiful memorial building not far from the
site of the old school.

Furthermore, there were a good many girls. Tom
Sawyer had an impressionable heart, and Sam Clemens
no less so. There was Bettie Ormsley, and Artemisia
Briggs, and Jennie Brady; also Mary Miller, who was
nearly twice his age and gave him his first broken
heart.

“I believe I was as miserable as a grown man
could be,” he said once, remembering.

Tom Sawyer had heart sorrows too, and we may imagine
that his emotions at such times were the emotions
of Sam Clemens, say at the age of ten.

But, as Tom Sawyer had one faithful sweetheart, so
did he. They were one and the same. Becky
Thatcher in the book was Laura Hawkins in reality.
The acquaintance of these two had begun when the Hawkins
family moved into the Virginia house on the corner
of Hill and Main streets.—­[The Hawkins
family in real life bore no resemblance to the family
of that name in The Gilded Age. Judge Hawkins
of The Gilded Age, as already noted, was John Clemens.
Mark Twain used the name Hawkins, also the name of
his boyhood sweetheart, Laura, merely for old times’
sake, and because in portraying the childhood of Laura
Hawkins he had a picture of the real Laura in his
mind.]—­The Clemens family was then in the
new home across the way, and the children were soon
acquainted. The boy could be tender and kind,
and was always gentle in his treatment of the other
sex. They visited back and forth, especially
around the new house, where there were nice pieces
of boards and bricks for play-houses. So they
played “keeping house,” and if they did
not always agree well, since the beginning of the
world sweethearts have not always agreed, even in
Arcady. Once when they were building a house—­and
there may have been some difference of opinion as
to its architecture—­the boy happened to
let a brick fall on the little girl’s finger.
If there had been any disagreement it vanished instantly
with that misfortune. He tried to comfort her
and soothe the pain; then he wept with her and suffered
most of the two, no doubt. So, you see, he was
just a little boy, after all, even though he was already
chief of a red-handed band, the “Black Avengers
of the Spanish Main.”

Page 40

He was always a tender-hearted lad. He would
never abuse an animal, unless, as in the Pain-killer
incident, his tendency to pranking ran away with him.
He had indeed a genuine passion for cats; summers when
he went to the farm he never failed to take his cat
in a basket. When he ate, it sat in a chair beside
him at the table. His sympathy included inanimate
things as well. He loved flowers—­not
as the embryo botanist or gardener, but as a personal
friend. He pitied the dead leaf and the murmuring
dried weed of November because their brief lives were
ended, and they would never know the summer again,
or grow glad with another spring. His heart went
out to them; to the river and the sky, the sunlit
meadow and the drifted hill. That his observation
of all nature was minute and accurate is shown everywhere
in his writing; but it was never the observation of
a young naturalist it was the subconscious observation
of sympathetic love.

We are wandering away from his school-days. They
were brief enough and came rapidly to an end.
They will not hold us long. Undoubtedly Tom Sawyer’s
distaste for school and his excuses for staying at
home—­usually some pretended illness—­have
ample foundation in the boyhood of Sam Clemens.
His mother punished him and pleaded with him, alternately.
He detested school as he detested nothing else on
earth, even going to church. “Church ain’t
worth shucks,” said Tom Sawyer, but it was better
than school.

As already noted, the school of Mr. Cross stood in
or near what is now the Square in Hannibal. The
Square was only a grove then, grown up with plum,
hazel, and vine—­a rare place for children.
At recess and the noon hour the children climbed trees,
gathered flowers, and swung in grape-vine swings.
There was a spelling-bee every Friday afternoon, for
Sam the only endurable event of the school exercises.
He could hold the floor at spelling longer than Buck
Brown. This was spectacular and showy; it invited
compliments even from Mr. Cross, whose name must have
been handed down by angels, it fitted him so well.
One day Sam Clemens wrote on his slate:

Cross by
name and cross by nature
Cross jumped
over an Irish potato.

He showed this to John Briggs, who considered it a
stroke of genius. He urged the author to write
it on the board at noon, but the poet’s ambition
did not go so far.

“Oh, pshaw!” said John. “I
wouldn’t be afraid to do it.

“I dare you to do it,” said Sam.

John Briggs never took a dare, and at noon, when Mr.
Cross was at home at dinner, he wrote flamingly the
descriptive couplet. When the teacher returned
and “books” were called he looked steadily
at John Briggs. He had recognized the penmanship.

“Did you do that?” he asked, ominously.

It was a time for truth.

“Yes, sir,” said John.

“Come here!” And John came, and paid for
his exploitation of genius heavily. Sam Clemens
expected that the next call would be for “author,”
but for some reason the investigation ended there.
It was unusual for him to escape. His back generally
kept fairly warm from one “frailing” to
the next.

Page 41

His rewards were not all of a punitive nature.
There were two medals in the school, one for spelling,
the other for amiability. They were awarded once
a week, and the holders wore them about the neck conspicuously,
and were envied accordingly. John Robards—­he
of the golden curls—­wore almost continuously
the medal for amiability, while Sam Clemens had a
mortgage on the medal for spelling. Sometimes
they traded, to see how it would seem, but the master
discouraged this practice by taking the medals away
from them for the remainder of the week. Once
Sam Clemens lost the medal by leaving the first “r”
out of February. He could have spelled it backward,
if necessary; but Laura Hawkins was the only one on
the floor against him, and he was a gallant boy.

The picture of that school as presented in the book
written thirty years later is faithful, we may believe,
and the central figure is a tender-hearted, romantic,
devil-may-care lad, loathing application and longing
only for freedom. It was a boon which would come
to him sooner even than he had dreamed.

XIV

THE PASSING OF JOHN CLEMENS

Judge Clemens, who time and again had wrecked or crippled
his fortune by devices more or less unusual, now adopted
the one unfailing method of achieving disaster.
He endorsed a large note, for a man of good repute,
and the payment of it swept him clean: home, property,
everything vanished again. The St. Louis cousin
took over the home and agreed to let the family occupy
it on payment of a small interest; but after an attempt
at housekeeping with a few scanty furnishings and Pamela’s
piano —­all that had been saved from the
wreck—­they moved across the street into
a portion of the Virginia house, then occupied by a
Dr. Grant. The Grants proposed that the Clemens
family move over and board them, a welcome arrangement
enough at this time.

Judge Clemens had still a hope left. The clerkship
of the Surrogate Court was soon to be filled by election.
It was an important remunerative office, and he was
regarded as the favorite candidate for the position.
His disaster had aroused general sympathy, and his
nomination and election were considered sure.
He took no chances; he made a canvass on horseback
from house to house, often riding through rain and
the chill of fall, acquiring a cough which was hard
to overcome. He was elected by a heavy majority,
and it was believed he could hold the office as long
as he chose. There seemed no further need of worry.
As soon as he was installed in office they would live
in style becoming their social position. About
the end of February he rode to Palmyra to be sworn
in. Returning he was drenched by a storm of rain
and sleet, arriving at last half frozen. His
system was in no condition to resist such a shock.
Pneumonia followed; physicians came with torments of
plasters and allopathic dosings that brought no relief.
Orion returned from St. Louis to assist in caring
for him, and sat by his bed, encouraging him and reading
to him, but it was evident that he grew daily weaker.
Now and then he became cheerful and spoke of the Tennessee
land as the seed of a vast fortune that must surely
flower at last. He uttered no regrets, no complaints.
Once only he said:

Page 42

“I believe if I had stayed in Tennessee I might
have been worth twenty thousand dollars to-day.”

On the morning of the 24th of March, 1847, it was
evident that he could not live many hours. He
was very weak. When he spoke, now and then, it
was of the land. He said it would soon make them
all rich and happy.

“Cling to the land,” he whispered.
“Cling to the land, and wait. Let nothing
beguile it away from you.”

A little later he beckoned to Pamela, now a lovely
girl of nineteen, and, putting his arm about her neck,
kissed her for the first time in years.

“Let me die,” he said.

He never spoke after that. A little more, and
the sad, weary life that had lasted less than forty-nine
years was ended: A dreamer and a moralist, an
upright man honored by all, he had never been a financier.
He ended life with less than he had begun.

XV

A YOUNG BEN FRANKLIN

For a third time death had entered the Clemens home:
not only had it brought grief now, but it had banished
the light of new fortune from the very threshold.
The disaster seemed complete.

The children were dazed. Judge Clemens had been
a distant, reserved man, but they had loved him, each
in his own way, and they had honored his uprightness
and nobility of purpose. Mrs. Clemens confided
to a neighbor that, in spite of his manner, her husband
had been always warm-hearted, with a deep affection
for his family. They remembered that he had never
returned from a journey without bringing each one some
present, however trifling. Orion, looking out
of his window next morning, saw old Abram Kurtz, and
heard him laugh. He wondered how anybody could
still laugh.

The boy Sam was fairly broken down. Remorse,
which always dealt with him unsparingly, laid a heavy
hand on him now. Wildness, disobedience, indifference
to his father’s wishes, all were remembered;
a hundred things, in themselves trifling, became ghastly
and heart-wringing in the knowledge that they could
never be undone. Seeing his grief, his mother
took him by the hand and led him into the room where
his father lay.

“It is all right, Sammy,” she said.
“What’s done is done, and it does not
matter to him any more; but here by the side of him
now I want you to promise me——­”

He turned, his eyes streaming with tears, and flung
himself into her arms.

“I will promise anything,” he sobbed,
“if you won’t make me go to school!
Anything!”

His mother held him for a moment, thinking, then she
said:

“No, Sammy; you need not go to school any more.
Only promise me to be a better boy. Promise not
to break my heart.”

So he promised her to be a faithful and industrious
man, and upright, like his father. His mother
was satisfied with that. The sense of honor and
justice was already strong within him. To him
a promise was a serious matter at any time; made under
conditions like these it would be held sacred.

Page 43

That night—­it was after the funeral—­his
tendency to somnambulism manifested itself. His
mother and sister, who were sleeping together, saw
the door open and a form in white enter. Naturally
nervous at such a time, and living in a day of almost
universal superstition, they were terrified and covered
their heads. Presently a hand was laid on the
coverlet, first at the foot, then at the head of the
bed. A thought struck Mrs. Clemens:

“Sam!” she said.

He answered, but he was sound asleep and fell to the
floor. He had risen and thrown a sheet around
him in his dreams. He walked in his sleep several
nights in succession after that. Then he slept
more soundly.

Orion returned to St. Louis. He was a very good
book and job printer by this time and received a salary
of ten dollars a week (high wages in those frugal
days), of which he sent three dollars weekly to the
family. Pamela, who had acquired a considerable
knowledge of the piano and guitar, went to the town
of Paris, in Monroe County, about fifty miles away,
and taught a class of music pupils, contributing whatever
remained after paying for her board and clothing to
the family fund. It was a hard task for the girl,
for she was timid and not over-strong; but she was
resolute and patient, and won success. Pamela
Clemens was a noble character and deserves a fuller
history than can be afforded in this work.

Mrs. Clemens and her son Samuel now had a sober talk,
and, realizing that the printing trade offered opportunity
for acquiring further education as well as a livelihood,
they agreed that he should be apprenticed to Joseph
P. Ament, who had lately moved from Palmyra to Hannibal
and bought a weekly Democrat paper, the Missouri Courier.
The apprentice terms were not over-liberal. They
were the usual thing for that time: board and
clothes—­“more board than clothes,
and not much of either,” Mark Twain used to
say.

“I was supposed to get two suits of clothes
a year, like a nigger, but I didn’t get them.
I got one suit and took the rest out in Ament’s
old garments, which didn’t fit me in any noticeable
way. I was only about half as big as he was,
and when I had on one of his shirts I felt as if I
had on a circus tent. I had to turn the trousers
up to my ears to make them short enough.”

There was another apprentice, a young fellow of about
eighteen, named Wales McCormick, a devilish fellow
and a giant. Ament’s clothes were too small
for Wales, but he had to wear them, and Sam Clemens
and Wales McCormick together, fitted out with Ament’s
clothes, must have been a picturesque pair. There
was also, for a time, a boy named Ralph; but he appears
to have presented no features of a striking sort, and
the memory of him has become dim.

Page 44

The apprentices ate in the kitchen at first, served
by the old slave-cook and her handsome mulatto daughter;
but those printer’s “devils” made
it so lively there that in due time they were promoted
to the family table, where they sat with Mr. and Mrs.
Ament and the one journeyman, Pet McMurry—­a
name that in itself was an inspiration. What those
young scamps did not already know Pet McMurry could
teach them. Sam Clemens had promised to be a
good boy, and he was, by the standards of boyhood.
He was industrious, regular at his work, quick to learn,
kind, and truthful. Angels could hardly be more
than that in a printing-office; but when food was
scarce even an angel—­a young printer angel—­could
hardly resist slipping down the cellar stairs at night
for raw potatoes, onions, and apples which they carried
into the office, where the boys slept on a pallet
on the floor, and this forage they cooked on the office
stove. Wales especially had a way of cooking a
potato that his associate never forgot.

It is unfortunate that no photographic portrait has
been preserved of Sam Clemens at this period.
But we may imagine him from a letter which, long years
after, Pet McMurry wrote to Mark Twain. He said:

If your memory extends so far back,
you will recall a little sandy- haired boy—­[The
color of Mark Twain’s hair in early life has
been variously referred to as red, black, and
brown. It was, in fact, as stated by McMurry,
“sandy” in boyhood, deepening later to
that rich, mahogany tone known as auburn.]—­of
nearly a quarter of a century ago, in the printing-office
at Hannibal, over the Brittingham drugstore, mounted
upon a little box at the case, pulling away at a huge
cigar or a diminutive pipe, who used to love to sing
so well the expression of the poor drunken man
who was supposed to have fallen by the wayside:
“If ever I get up again, I’ll stay up—­if
I kin.” . . . Do you recollect any
of the serious conflicts that mirth-loving brain
of yours used to get you into with that diminutive
creature Wales McCormick—­how you used to
call upon me to hold your cigar or pipe, whilst
you went entirely through him?

This is good testimony, without doubt. When he
had been with Ament little more than a year Sam had
become office favorite and chief standby. Whatever
required intelligence and care and imagination was
given to Sam Clemens. He could set type as accurately
and almost as rapidly as Pet McMurry; he could wash
up the forms a good deal better than Pet; and he could
run the job-press to the tune of “Annie Laurie”
or “Along the Beach at Rockaway,” without
missing a stroke or losing a finger. Sometimes,
at odd moments, he would “set up” one
of the popular songs or some favorite poem like “The
Blackberry Girl,” and of these he sent copies
printed on cotton, even on scraps of silk, to favorite
girl friends; also to Puss Quarles, on his uncle’s
farm, where he seldom went now, because he was really
grown up, associating with men and doing a man’s

Page 45

work. He had charge of the circulation—­which
is to say, he carried the papers. During the
last year of the Mexican War, when a telegraph-wire
found its way across the Mississippi to Hannibal—­a
long sagging span, that for some reason did not break
of its own weight—­he was given charge of
the extras with news from the front; and the burning
importance of his mission, the bringing of news hot
from the field of battle, spurred him to endeavors
that won plaudits and success.

He became a sort of subeditor. When the forms
of the paper were ready to close and Ament was needed
to supply more matter, it was Sam who was delegated
to find that rather uncertain and elusive person and
labor with him until the required copy was produced.
Thus it was he saw literature in the making.

It is not believed that Sam had any writing ambitions
of his own. His chief desire was to be an all-round
journeyman printer like Pet McMurry; to drift up and
down the world in Pet’s untrammeled fashion;
to see all that Pet had seen and a number of things
which Pet appeared to have overlooked. He varied
on occasion from this ambition. When the first
negro minstrel show visited Hannibal and had gone,
he yearned for a brief period to be a magnificent
“middle man” or even the “end-man”
of that combination; when the circus came and went,
he dreamed of the day when, a capering frescoed clown,
he would set crowded tiers of spectators guffawing
at his humor; when the traveling hypnotist arrived,
he volunteered as a subject, and amazed the audience
by the marvel of his performance.

In later life he claimed that he had not been hypnotized
in any degree, but had been pretending throughout—­a
statement always denied by his mother and his brother
Orion. This dispute was never settled, and never
could be. Sam Clemens’s tendency to somnambulism
would seem to suggest that he really might have taken
on a hypnotic condition, while his consummate skill
as an actor, then and always, and his early fondness
of exhibition and a joke, would make it not unlikely
that he was merely “showing off” and having
his fun. He could follow the dictates of a vivid
imagination and could be as outrageous as he chose
without incurring responsibility of any sort.
But there was a penalty: he must allow pins and
needles to be thrust into his flesh and suffer these
tortures without showing discomfort to the spectators.
It is difficult to believe that any boy, however great
his exhibitory passion, could permit, in the full
possession of his sensibilities, a needle to be thrust
deeply into his flesh without manifestations of a most
unmesmeric sort. The conclusion seems warranted
that he began by pretending, but that at times he
was at least under semi-mesmeric control. At all
events, he enjoyed a week of dazzling triumph, though
in the end he concluded to stick to printing as a
trade.

We have said that he was a rapid learner and a neat
workman. At Ament’s he generally had a
daily task, either of composition or press-work, after
which he was free. When he had got the hang of
his work he was usually done by three in the afternoon;
then away to the river or the cave, as in the old
days, sometimes with his boy friends, sometimes with
Laura Hawkins gathering wild columbine on that high
cliff overlooking the river, Lover’s Leap.

Page 46

He was becoming quite a beau, attending parties on
occasion, where old-fashioned games—­Forfeits,
Ring-around-a-Rosy, Dusty Miller, and the like—­were
regarded as rare amusements. He was a favorite
with girls of his own age. He was always good-natured,
though he played jokes on them, too, and was often
a severe trial. He was with Laura Hawkins more
than the others, usually her escort. On Saturday
afternoons in winter he carried her skates to Bear
Creek and helped her to put them on. After which
they skated “partners,” holding hands tightly,
and were a likely pair of children, no doubt.
In The Gilded Age Laura Hawkins at twelve is pictured
“with her dainty hands propped into the ribbon-bordered
pockets of her apron . . . a vision to warm the coldest
heart and bless and cheer the saddest.”
The author had the real Laura of his childhood in
his mind when he wrote that, though the story itself
bears no resemblance to her life.

They were never really sweethearts, those two.
They were good friends and comrades. Sometimes
he brought her magazines—­exchanges from
the printing—­office—­Godey’s
and others. These were a treat, for such things
were scarce enough. He cared little for reading,
himself, beyond a few exciting tales, though the putting
into type of a good deal of miscellaneous matter had
beyond doubt developed in him a taste for general
knowledge. It needed only to be awakened.

XVI

THE TURNING-POINT

There came into his life just at this period one of
those seemingly trifling incidents which, viewed in
retrospect, assume pivotal proportions. He was
on his way from the office to his home one afternoon
when he saw flying along the pavement a square of paper,
a leaf from a book. At an earlier time he would
not have bothered with it at all, but any printed
page had acquired a professional interest for him now.
He caught the flying scrap and examined it. It
was a leaf from some history of Joan of Arc.
The “maid” was described in the cage at
Rouen, in the fortress, and the two ruffian English
soldiers had stolen her clothes. There was a
brief description and a good deal of dialogue—­her
reproaches and their ribald replies.

He had never heard of the subject before. He
had never read any history. When he wanted to
know any fact he asked Henry, who read everything
obtainable. Now, however, there arose within him
a deep compassion for the gentle Maid of Orleans,
a burning resentment toward her captors, a powerful
and indestructible interest in her sad history.
It was an interest that would grow steadily for more
than half a lifetime and culminate at last in that
crowning work, the Recollections, the loveliest story
ever told of the martyred girl.

Page 47

The incident meant even more than that: it meant
the awakening of his interest in all history—­the
world’s story in its many phases—­a
passion which became the largest feature of his intellectual
life and remained with him until his very last day
on earth. From the moment when that fluttering
leaf was blown into his hands his career as one of
the world’s mentally elect was assured.
It gave him his cue—­the first word of a
part in the human drama. It crystallized suddenly
within him sympathy with the oppressed, rebellion
against tyranny and treachery, scorn for the divine
rights of kings. A few months before he died he
wrote a paper on “The Turning-point of My Life.”
For some reason he did not mention this incident.
Yet if there was a turning-point in his life, he reached
it that bleak afternoon on the streets of Hannibal
when a stray leaf from another life was blown into
his hands.

He read hungrily now everything he could find relating
to the French wars, and to Joan in particular.
He acquired an appetite for history in general, the
record of any nation or period; he seemed likely to
become a student. Presently he began to feel
the need of languages, French and German. There
was no opportunity to acquire French, that he could
discover, but there was a German shoemaker in Hannibal
who agreed to teach his native tongue. Sam Clemens
got a friend—­very likely it was John Briggs—­to
form a class with him, and together they arranged for
lessons. The shoemaker had little or no English.
They had no German. It would seem, however, that
their teacher had some sort of a “word-book,”
and when they assembled in his little cubby-hole of
a retreat he began reading aloud from it this puzzling
sentence:

“De hain eet flee whoop in de hayer.”

“Dere!” he said, triumphantly; “you
know dose vord?”

The students looked at each other helplessly.

The teacher repeated the sentence, and again they
were helpless when he asked if they recognized it.

Then in despair he showed them the book. It was
an English primer, and the sentence was:

“The hen, it flies up in the air.”

They explained to him gently that it was German they
wished to learn, not English—­not under
the circumstances. Later, Sam made an attempt
at Latin, and got a book for that purpose, but gave
it up, saying:

“No, that language is not for me. I’ll
do well enough to learn English.” A boy
who took it up with him became a Latin scholar.

His prejudice against oppression he put into practice.
Boys who were being imposed upon found in him a ready
protector. Sometimes, watching a game of marbles
or tops, he would remark in his slow, impressive way:

“You mustn’t cheat that boy.”
And the cheating stopped. When it didn’t,
there was a combat, with consequences.

XVII

TheHannibal “Journal”

Page 48

Orion returned from St. Louis. He felt that he
was needed in Hannibal and, while wages there were
lower, his expenses at home were slight; there was
more real return for the family fund. His sister
Pamela was teaching a class in Hannibal at this time.
Orion was surprised when his mother and sister greeted
him with kisses and tears. Any outward display
of affection was new to him.

The family had moved back across the street by this
time. With Sam supporting himself, the earnings
of Orion and Pamela provided at least a semblance
of comfort. But Orion was not satisfied.
Then, as always, he had a variety of vague ambitions.
Oratory appealed to him, and he delivered a temperance
lecture with an accompaniment of music, supplied chiefly
by Pamela. He aspired to the study of law, a recurring
inclination throughout his career. He also thought
of the ministry, an ambition which Sam shared with
him for a time. Every mischievous boy has it,
sooner or later, though not all for the same reasons.

“It was the most earnest ambition I ever had,”
Mark Twain once remarked, thoughtfully. “Not
that I ever really wanted to be a preacher, but because
it never occurred to me that a preacher could be damned.
It looked like a safe job.”

A periodical ambition of Orion’s was to own
and conduct a paper in Hannibal. He felt that
in such a position he might become a power in Western
journalism. Once his father had considered buying
the Hannibal Journal to give Orion a chance, and possibly
to further his own political ambitions. Now Orion
considered it for himself. The paper was for sale
under a mortgage, and he was enabled to borrow the
$500 which would secure ownership. Sam’s
two years at Ament’s were now complete, and
Orion induced him to take employment on the Journal.
Henry at eleven was taken out of school to learn typesetting.

Orion was a gentle, accommodating soul, but he lacked
force and independence.

“I followed all the advice I received,”
he says in his record. “If two or more
persons conflicted with each other, I adopted the views
of the last.”

He started full of enthusiasm. He worked like
a slave to save help: wrote his own editorials,
and made his literary selections at night. The
others worked too. Orion gave them hard tasks
and long hours. He had the feeling that the paper
meant fortune or failure to them all; that all must
labor without stint. In his usual self-accusing
way he wrote afterward:

I was tyrannical and unjust to Sam. He was as
swift and as clean as a good journeyman. I gave
him tasks, and if he got through well I begrudged
him the time and made him work more. He set a
clean proof, and Henry a very dirty one. The
correcting was left to be done in the form the day
before publication. Once we were kept late, and
Sam complained with tears of bitterness that he was
held till midnight on Henry’s dirty proofs.

Orion did not realize any injustice at the time.
The game was too desperate to be played tenderly.
His first editorials were so brilliant that it was
not believed he could have written them. The paper
throughout was excellent, and seemed on the high road
to success. But the pace was too hard to maintain.
Overwork brought weariness, and Orion’s enthusiasm,
never a very stable quantity, grew feeble. He
became still more exacting.

Page 49

It is not to be supposed that Sam Clemens had given
up all amusements to become merely a toiling drudge
or had conquered in any large degree his natural taste
for amusement. He had become more studious; but
after the long, hard days in the office it was not
to be expected that a boy of fifteen would employ
the evening—­at least not every evening—­in
reading beneficial books. The river was always
near at hand—­for swimming in the summer
and skating in the winter—­and once even
at this late period it came near claiming a heavy
tribute. That was one winter’s night when
with another boy he had skated until nearly midnight.
They were about in the middle of the river when they
heard a terrific and grinding noise near the shore.
They knew what it was. The ice was breaking up,
and they set out for home forthwith. It was moonlight,
and they could tell the ice from the water, which
was a good thing, for there were wide cracks toward
the shore, and they had to wait for these to close.
They were an hour making the trip, and just before
they reached the bank they came to a broad space of
water. The ice was lifting and falling and crunching
all around them. They waited as long as they dared
and decided to leap from cake to cake. Sam made
the crossing without accident, but his companion slipped
in when a few feet from shore. He was a good
swimmer and landed safely, but the bath probably cost
him his hearing. He was taken very ill.
One disease followed another, ending with scarlet
fever and deafness.

There was also entertainment in the office itself.
A country boy named Jim Wolfe had come to learn the
trade—­a green, good-natured, bashful boy.
In every trade tricks are played on the new apprentice,
and Sam felt that it was his turn to play them.
With John Briggs to help him, tortures for Jim Wolfe
were invented and applied.

They taught him to paddle a canoe, and upset him.
They took him sniping at night and left him “holding
the bag” in the old traditional fashion while
they slipped off home and went to bed.

But Jim Wolfe’s masterpiece of entertainment
was one which he undertook on his own account.
Pamela was having a candy-pull down-stairs one night—­a
grown-up candy-pull to which the boys were not expected.
Jim would not have gone, anyway, for he was bashful
beyond belief, and always dumb, and even pale with
fear, in the presence of pretty Pamela Clemens.
Up in their room the boys could hear the merriment
from below and could look out in the moonlight on
the snowy sloping roof that began just beneath their
window. Down at the eaves was the small arbor,
green in summer, but covered now with dead vines and
snow. They could hear the candymakers come out,
now and then, doubtless setting out pans of candy
to cool. By and by the whole party seemed to come
out into the little arbor, to try the candy, perhaps
the joking and laughter came plainly to the boys up-stairs.
About this time there appeared on the roof from somewhere
two disreputable cats, who set up a most disturbing
duel of charge and recrimination. Jim detested
the noise, and perhaps was gallant enough to think
it would disturb the party. He had nothing to
throw at them, but he said:

Page 50

“For two cents I’d get out there and knock
their heads off.”

“You wouldn’t dare to do it,” Sam
said, purringly.

This was wormwood to Jim. He was really a brave
spirit.

“I would too,” he said, “and I will
if you say that again.”

“Why, Jim, of course you wouldn’t dare
to go out there. You might catch cold.”

“You wait and see,” said Jim Wolfe.

He grabbed a pair of yarn stockings for his feet,
raised the window, and crept out on the snowy roof.
There was a crust of ice on the snow, but Jim jabbed
his heels through it and stood up in the moonlight,
his legs bare, his single garment flapping gently
in the light winter breeze. Then he started slowly
toward the cats, sinking his heels in the snow each
time for a footing, a piece of lath in his hand.
The cats were on the corner of the roof above the
arbor, and Jim cautiously worked his way in that direction.
The roof was not very steep. He was doing well
enough until he came to a place where the snow had
melted until it was nearly solid ice. He was
so intent on the cats that he did not notice this,
and when he struck his heel down to break the crust
nothing yielded. A second later Jim’s feet
had shot out from under him, and he vaulted like an
avalanche down the icy roof out on the little vine-clad
arbor, and went crashing through among those candypullers,
gathered there with their pans of cooling taffy.
There were wild shrieks and a general flight.
Neither Jim nor Sam ever knew how he got back to their
room, but Jim was overcome with the enormity of his
offense, while Sam was in an agony of laughter.

“You did it splendidly, Jim,” he drawled,
when he could speak. “Nobody could have
done it better; and did you see how those cats got
out of there? I never had any idea when you started
that you meant to do it that way. And it was
such a surprise to the folks down-stairs. How
did you ever think of it?”

It was a fearful ordeal for a boy like Jim Wolfe,
but he stuck to his place in spite of what he must
have suffered. The boys made him one of them
soon after that. His initiation was thought to
be complete.

An account of Jim Wolfe and the cats was the first
original story Mark Twain ever told. He told
it next day, which was Sunday, to Jimmy McDaniel,
the baker’s son, as they sat looking out over
the river, eating gingerbread. His hearer laughed
immoderately, and the story-teller was proud and happy
in his success.

XVIII

THE BEGINNING OF A LITERARY LIFE

Orion’s paper continued to go downhill.
Following some random counsel, he changed the name
of it and advanced the price—­two blunders.
Then he was compelled to reduce the subscription,
also the advertising rates. He was obliged to
adopt a descending scale of charges and expenditures
to keep pace with his declining circulation—­a
fatal sign. A publisher must lead his subscription
list, not follow it.

Page 51

“I was walking backward,” he said, “not
seeing where I stepped.”

In desperation he broke away and made a trip to Tennessee
to see if something could not be realized on the land,
leaving his brother Sam in charge of the office.
It was a journey without financial results; yet it
bore fruit, for it marked the beginning of Mark Twain’s
literary career.

Sam, in his brother’s absence, concluded to
edit the paper in a way that would liven up the circulation.
He had never done any writing—­not for print—­but
he had the courage of his inclinations. His local
items were of a kind known as “spicy”;
his personals brought prompt demand for satisfaction.
The editor of a rival paper had been in love, and was
said to have gone to the river one night to drown
himself. Sam gave a picturesque account of this,
with all the names connected with the affair.
Then he took a couple of big wooden block letters,
turned them upside down, and engraved illustrations
for it, showing the victim wading out into the river
with a stick to test the depth of the water. When
this issue of the paper came out the demand for it
was very large. The press had to be kept running
steadily to supply copies. The satirized editor
at first swore that he would thrash the whole journal
office, then he left town and did not come back any
more. The embryo Mark Twain also wrote a poem.
It was addressed “To Mary in Hannibal,”
but the title was too long to be set in one column,
so he left out all the letters in Hannibal, except
the first and the last, and supplied their place with
a dash, with a startling result. Such were the
early flickerings of a smoldering genius. Orion
returned, remonstrated, and apologized. He reduced
Sam to the ranks. In later years he saw his mistake.

“I could have distanced all competitors even
then,” he said, “if I had recognized Sam’s
ability and let him go ahead, merely keeping him from
offending worthy persons.”

Sam was subdued, but not done for. He never would
be, now. He had got his first taste of print,
and he liked it. He promptly wrote two anecdotes
which he thought humorous and sent them to the Philadelphia
Saturday Evening Post. They were accepted—­without
payment, of course, in those days; and when the papers
containing them appeared he felt suddenly lifted to
a lofty plane of literature. This was in 1851.

“Seeing them in print was a joy which rather
exceeded anything in that line I have ever experienced
since,” he said, nearly sixty years later.

Yet he did not feel inspired to write anything further
for the Post. Twice during the next two years
he contributed to the Journal; once something about
Jim Wolfe, though it was not the story of the cats,
and another burlesque on a rival editor whom he pictured
as hunting snipe with a cannon, the explosion of which
was said to have blown the snipe out of the country.
No contributions of this time have been preserved.
High prices have been offered for copies of the Hannibal

Page 52

journal containing them, but without success.
The Post sketches were unsigned and have not been
identified. It is likely they were trivial enough.
His earliest work showed no special individuality
or merit, being mainly crude and imitative, as the
work of a boy—­even a precocious boy—­is
likely to be. He was not especially precocious—­not
in literature. His literary career would halt
and hesitate and trifle along for many years yet,
gathering impetus and equipment for the fuller, statelier
swing which would bring a greater joy to the world
at large, even if not to himself, than that first,
far-off triumph.—­[In Mark Twain’s
sketch “My First Literary Venture” he
has set down with characteristic embroideries some
account of this early authorship.]

Those were hard financial days. Orion could pay
nothing on his mortgage —­barely the interest.
He had promised Sam three dollars and a half a week,
but he could do no more than supply him with board
and clothes —­“poor, shabby clothes,”
he says in his record.

“My mother and sister did the housekeeping.
My mother was cook. She used the provisions I
supplied her. We therefore had a regular diet
of bacon, butter, bread, and coffee.”

Mrs. Clemens again took a few boarders; Pamela, who
had given up teaching for a time, organized another
music class. Orion became despondent. One
night a cow got into the office, upset a typecase,
and ate up two composition rollers. Orion felt
that fate was dealing with a heavy hand. Another
disaster quickly followed. Fire broke out in the
office, and the loss was considerable. An insurance
company paid one hundred and fifty dollars. With
it Orion replaced such articles as were absolutely
needed for work, and removed his plant into the front
room of the Clemens dwelling. He raised the one-story
part of the building to give them an added room up-stairs;
and there for another two years, by hard work and
pinching economies, the dying paper managed to drag
along. It was the fire that furnished Sam Clemens
with his Jim Wolfe sketch. In it he stated that
Jim in his excitement had carried the office broom
half a mile and had then come back after the wash-pan.

In the meantime Pamela Clemens married. Her husband
was a well-to-do merchant, William A. Moffett, formerly
of Hannibal, but then of St. Louis, where he had provided
her with the comforts of a substantial home.

Orion tried the experiment of a serial story.
He wrote to a number of well-known authors in the
East, but was unable to find one who would supply
a serial for the price he was willing to pay.
Finally he obtained a translation of a French novel
for the sum offered, which was five dollars.
It did not save the sinking ship, however. He
made the experiment of a tri-weekly, without success.
He noticed that even his mother no longer read his
editorials, but turned to the general news. This
was a final blow.

“I sat down in the dark,” he says, “the
moon glinting in at the open door. I sat with
one leg over the chair and let my mind float.”

Page 53

He had received an offer of five hundred dollars for
his office—­the amount of the mortgage—­and
in his moonlight reverie he decided to dispose of
it on those terms. This was in 1853.

His brother Samuel was no longer with him. Several
months before, in June, Sam decided he would go out
into the world. He was in his eighteenth year
now, a good workman, faithful and industrious, but
he had grown restless in unrewarded service.
Beyond his mastery of the trade he had little to show
for six years of hard labor. Once when he had
asked Orion for a few dollars to buy a second-hand
gun, Orion, exasperated by desperate circumstances,
fell into a passion and rated him for thinking of
such extravagance. Soon afterward Sam confided
to his mother that he was going away; that he believed
Orion hated him; that there was no longer a place
for him at home. He said he would go to St. Louis,
where Pamela was. There would be work for him
in St. Louis, and he could send money home. His
intention was to go farther than St. Louis, but he
dared not tell her. His mother put together sadly
enough the few belongings of what she regarded as
her one wayward boy; then she held up a little Testament:

“I want you to take hold of the other end of
this, Sam,” she said, “and make me a promise.”

If one might have a true picture of that scene:
the shin, wiry woman of forty-nine, her figure as
straight as her deportment, gray-eyed, tender, and
resolute, facing the fair-cheeked, auburn-haired youth
of seventeen, his eyes as piercing and unwavering
as her own. Mother and son, they were of the
same metal and the same mold.

“I want you to repeat after me, Sam, these words,”
Jane Clemens said. “I do solemnly swear
that I will not throw a card or drink a drop of liquor
while I am gone.”

He repeated the oath after her, and she kissed him.

“Remember that, Sam, and write to us,”
she said.

“And so,” Orion records, “he went
wandering in search of that comfort and that advancement
and those rewards of industry which he had failed to
find where I was—­gloomy, taciturn, and selfish.
I not only missed his labor; we all missed his bounding
activity and merriment.”

XIX

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF FRANKLIN

He went to St. Louis by the night boat, visited his
sister Pamela, and found a job in the composing-room
of the Evening News. He remained on the paper
only long enough to earn money with which to see the
world. The “world” was New York City,
where the Crystal Palace Fair was then going on.
The railway had been completed by this time, but he
had not traveled on it. It had not many comforts;
several days and nights were required for the New
York trip; yet it was a wonderful and beautiful experience.
He felt that even Pet McMurry could hardly have done
anything to surpass it. He arrived in New York
with two or three dollars in his pocket and a ten-dollar
bill concealed in the lining of his coat.

Page 54

New York was a great and amazing city. It almost
frightened him. It covered the entire lower end
of Manhattan Island; visionary citizens boasted that
one day it would cover it all. The World’s
Fair building, the Crystal Palace, stood a good way
out. It was where Bryant Park is now, on Forty-second
Street and Sixth Avenue. Young Clemens classed
it as one of the wonders of the world and wrote lavishly
of its marvels. A portion of a letter to his
sister Pamela has been preserved and is given here
not only for what it contains, but as the earliest
existing specimen of his composition. The fragment
concludes what was doubtless an exhaustive description.

From the gallery (second floor) you
have a glorious sight—­the flags of
the different countries represented, the lofty dome,
glittering jewelry, gaudy tapestry, etc.,
with the busy crowd passing to and fro ’tis
a perfect fairy palace—­beautiful beyond
description.

The machinery department is on the main
floor, but I cannot enumerate any of it on account
of the lateness of the hour (past 1 o’clock).
It would take more than a week to examine everything
on exhibition; and I was only in a little over
two hours to-night. I only glanced at about
one-third of the articles; and, having a poor
memory, I have enumerated scarcely any of even the
principal objects. The visitors to the Palace
average 6,000 daily—­double the population
of Hannibal. The price of admission being 50 cents,
they take in about $3,000.

The Latting Observatory (height about
280 feet) is near the Palace —­from
it you can obtain a grand view of the city and the
country around. The Croton Aqueduct, to supply
the city with water, is the greatest wonder yet.
Immense sewers are laid across the bed of the Hudson
River, and pass through the country to Westchester
County, where a whole river is turned from its
course and brought to New York. From the
reservoir in the city to the Westchester County reservoir
the distance is thirty-eight miles and, if necessary,
they could easily supply every family in New York
with one hundred barrels of water per day!

I am very sorry to learn that Henry
has been sick. He ought to go to the country
and take exercise, for he is not half so healthy as
Ma thinks he is. If he had my walking to do,
he would be another boy entirely. Four times
every day I walk a little over a mile; and working
hard all day and walking four miles is exercise.
I am used to it now, though, and it is no trouble.
Where is it Orion’s going to? Tell
Ma my promises are faithfully kept; and if I have my
health I will take her to Ky. in the spring—­I
shall save money for this. Tell Jim (Wolfe)
and all the rest of them to write, and give me
all the news ....

(It has just struck 2 A.M., and I always
get up at 6, and am at work at 7.) You ask where
I spend my evenings. Where would you suppose,
with a free printer’s library containing
more than 4,000 volumes within a quarter of a
mile of me, and nobody at home to talk to? Write
soon.

Truly your brother,
Sam

Page 55

P.S.-I have written this by a light
so dim that you nor Ma could not
read by it. Write, and let me know how Henry
is.

It is a good letter; it is direct and clear in its
descriptive quality, and it gives us a scale of things.
Double the population of Hannibal visited the Crystal
Palace in one day! and the water to supply the city
came a distance of thirty-eight miles! Doubtless
these were amazing statistics.

Then there was the interest in family affairs—­always
strong—­his concern for Henry, whom he loved
tenderly; his memory of the promise to his mother;
his understanding of her craving to visit her old home.
He did not write to her direct, for the reason that
Orion’s plans were then uncertain, and it was
not unlikely that he had already found a new location.
From this letter, too, we learn that the boy who detested
school was reveling in a library of four thousand books—­more
than he had ever seen together before. We have
somehow the feeling that he had all at once stepped
from boyhood to manhood, and that the separation was
marked by a very definite line.

The work he had secured was in Cliff Street in the
printing establishment of John A. Gray & Green, who
agreed to pay him four dollars a week, and did pay
that amount in wildcat money, which saved them about
twenty-five per cent. of the sum. He lodged at
a mechanics’ boarding-house in Duane Street,
and when he had paid his board and washing he sometimes
had as much as fifty cents to lay away.

He did not like the board. He had been accustomed
to the Southern mode of cooking, and wrote home complaining
that New-Yorkers did not have “hot-bread”
or biscuits, but ate “light-bread,” which
they allowed to get stale, seeming to prefer it in
that way. On the whole, there was not much inducement
to remain in New York after he had satisfied himself
with its wonders. He lingered, however, through
the hot months of 1853, and found it not easy to go.
In October he wrote to Pamela, suggesting plans for
Orion; also for Henry and Jim Wolfe, whom he seems
never to have overlooked. Among other things
he says:

I have not written to any of the family
for some time, from the fact, firstly, that I
didn’t know where they were, and, secondly,
because I have been fooling myself with the idea
that I was going to leave New York every day for
the last two weeks. I have taken a liking
to the abominable place, and every time I get ready
to leave I put it off a day or so, from some unaccountable
cause. I think I shall get off Tuesday, though.

Edwin Forrest has been playing for the
last sixteen days at the Broadway Theater, but
I never went to see him till last night. The
play was the “Gladiator.” I did
not like parts of it much, but other portions
were really splendid. In the latter part of the
last act, where the “Gladiator” (Forrest)
dies at his brother’s feet (in all the fierce
pleasure of gratified revenge), the man’s whole

Page 56

soul seems absorbed in the part he is playing;
and it is really startling to see him. I
am sorry I did not see him play “Damon and Pythias”
—­the former character being the greatest.
He appears in Philadelphia on Monday night.

I have not received a letter
from home lately, but got a “Journal”
the other day, in which I
see the office has been sold . . . .

If my letters do not come often, you
need not bother yourself about me; for if you
have a brother nearly eighteen years of age who is
not able to take care of himself a few miles from
home, such a brother is not worth one’s
thoughts; and if I don’t manage to take care
of No. 1, be assured you will never know it. I
am not afraid, however; I shall ask favors of
no one and endeavor to be (and shall be) as “independent
as a wood-sawyer’s clerk.”. . .

Passage to Albany (160 miles)
on the finest steamers that ply the
Hudson is now 25 cents—­cheap
enough, but is generally cheaper than
that in the summer.

“I have been fooling myself with the idea that
I was going to leave New York” is distinctly
a Mark Twain phrase. He might have said that fifty
years later.

He did go to Philadelphia presently and found work
“subbing” on a daily paper,’The
Inquirer.’ He was a fairly swift compositor.
He could set ten thousand ems a day, and he received
pay according to the amount of work done. Days
or evenings when there was no vacant place for him
to fill he visited historic sites, the art-galleries,
and the libraries. He was still acquiring education,
you see. Sometimes at night when he returned
to his boardinghouse his room-mate, an Englishman named
Sumner, grilled a herring, and this was regarded as
a feast. He tried his hand at writing in Philadelphia,
though this time without success. For some reason
he did not again attempt to get into the Post, but
offered his contributions to the Philadelphia ’Ledger’—­mainly
poetry of an obituary kind. Perhaps it was burlesque;
he never confessed that, but it seems unlikely that
any other obituary poetry would have failed of print.

“My efforts were not received with approval,”
was all he ever said of it afterward.

There were two or three characters in the ‘Inquirer’
office whom he did not forget. One of these was
an old compositor who had “held a case”
in that office for many years. His name was Frog,
and sometimes when he went away the “office
devils” would hang a line over his case, with
a hook on it baited with a piece of red flannel.
They never got tired of this joke, and Frog was always
able to get as mad over it as he had been in the beginning.
Another old fellow there furnished amusement.
He owned a house in the distant part of the city and
had an abnormal fear of fire. Now and then, when
everything was quiet except the clicking of the types,
some one would step to the window and say with a concerned
air:

“Doesn’t that smoke—­[or that
light, if it was evening]—­seem to be in
the northwestern part of the city?” or “There
go the fire-bells again!” and away the old man
would tramp up to the roof to investigate. It
was not the most considerate sport, and it is to be
feared that Sam Clemens had his share in it.

Page 57

He found that he liked Philadelphia. He could
save a little money there, for one thing, and now
and then sent something to his mother—­small
amounts, but welcome and gratifying, no doubt.
In a letter to Orion —­whom he seems to
have forgiven with absence—­written October
26th, he incloses a gold dollar to buy her a handkerchief,
and “to serve as a specimen of the kind of stuff
we are paid with in Philadelphia.” Further
along he adds:

Unlike New York, I like this Philadelphia
amazingly, and the people in it. There is
only one thing that gets my “dander” up—­and
that is the hands are always encouraging me:
telling me “it’s no use to get discouraged—­no
use to be downhearted, for there is more work here
than you can do!” “Downhearted,”
the devil! I have not had a particle of such
a feeling since I left Hannibal, more than four months
ago. I fancy they’ll have to wait some time
till they see me downhearted or afraid of starving
while I have strength to work and am in a city
of 400,000 inhabitants. When I was in Hannibal,
before I had scarcely stepped out of the town
limits, nothing could have convinced me that I
would starve as soon as I got a little way from home.

He mentions the grave of Franklin in Christ Churchyard
with its inscription “Benjamin and Deborah Franklin,”
and one is sharply reminded of the similarity between
the early careers of Benjamin Franklin and Samuel
Clemens. Each learned the printer’s trade;
each worked in his brother’s printing-office
and wrote for the paper; each left quietly and went
to New York, and from New York to Philadelphia, as
a journeyman printer; each in due season became a
world figure, many-sided, human, and of incredible
popularity.

The foregoing letter ends with a long description
of a trip made on the Fairmount stage. It is
a good, vivid description—­impressions of
a fresh, sensitive mind, set down with little effort
at fine writing; a letter to convey literal rather
than literary enjoyment. The Wire Bridge, Fairmount
Park and Reservoir, new buildings—­all these
passed in review. A fine residence about completed
impressed him:

It was built entirely of great blocks
of red granite. The pillars in front were
all finished but one. These pillars were beautiful,
ornamental fluted columns, considerably larger
than a hogshead at the base, and about as high
as Clapinger’s second-story front windows
. . . . To see some of them finished and standing,
and then the huge blocks lying about, looks so
massy, and carries one, in imagination, to the
ruined piles of ancient Babylon. I despise the
infernal bogus brick columns plastered over with mortar.
Marble is the cheapest building-stone about Philadelphia.

There is a flavor of the ‘Innocents’ about
it; then a little further along:

Page 58

I saw small steamboats, with their signs
up—­“For Wissahickon and Manayunk
25 cents.” Geo. Lippard, in his Legends
of Washington and his Generals, has rendered the
Wissahickon sacred in my eyes, and I shall make
that trip, as well as one to Germantown, soon . . .
.

There is one fine custom observed in
Phila. A gentleman is always expected to
hand up a lady’s money for her. Yesterday
I sat in the front end of the bus, directly under
the driver’s box—­a lady sat opposite
me. She handed me her money, which was right.
But, Lord! a St. Louis lady would think herself
ruined if she should be so familiar with a stranger.
In St. Louis a man will sit in the front end of
the stage, and see a lady stagger from the far end
to pay her fare.

There are two more letters from Philadelphia:
one of November, 28th, to Orion, who by this time
had bought a paper in Muscatine, Iowa, and located
the family there; and one to Pamela dated December
5th. Evidently Orion had realized that his brother
might be of value as a contributor, for the latter
says:

I will try to write for the paper occasionally,
but I fear my letters will be very uninteresting,
for this incessant night work dulls one’s
ideas amazingly.... I believe I am the only person
in the Inquirer office that does not drink.
One young fellow makes $18 for a few weeks, and
gets on a grand “bender” and spends every
cent of it.

How do you like “free soil"?—­I
would like amazingly to see a good
old-fashioned negro. My love to all.

Truly your brother,
Sam

In the letter to Pamela he is clearly homesick.

“I only want to return to avoid night work,
which is injuring my eyes,” is the excuse, but
in the next sentence he complains of the scarcity of
letters from home and those “not written as they
should be.” “One only has to leave
home to learn how to write interesting letters to an
absent friend,” he says, and in conclusion,
“I don’t like our present prospect for
cold weather at all.”

He had been gone half a year, and the first attack
of home-longing, for a boy of his age, was due.
The novelty of things had worn off; it was coming
on winter; changes had taken place among his home people
and friends; the life he had known best and longest
was going on and he had no part in it. Leaning
over his case, he sometimes hummed:

“An exile from home,
splendor dazzles in vain.”

He weathered the attack and stuck it out for more
than half a year longer. In January, when the
days were dark and he grew depressed, he made a trip
to Washington to see the sights of the capital.
His stay was comparatively brief, and he did not work
there. He returned to Philadelphia, working for
a time on the Ledger and North American. Finally
he went back to New York. There are no letters
of this period. His second experience in New
York appears not to have been recorded, and in later
years was only vaguely remembered. It was late
in the summer of 1854 when he finally set out on his
return to the West. His ‘Wanderjahr’
had lasted nearly fifteen months.

Page 59

He went directly to St. Louis, sitting up three days
and nights in a smoking-car to make the journey.
He was worn out when he arrived, but stopped there
only a few hours to see Pamela. It was his mother
he was anxious for. He took the Keokuk Packet
that night, and, flinging himself on his berth, slept
the clock three times around, scarcely rousing or
turning over, only waking at last at Muscatine.
For a long time that missing day confused his calculations.

When he reached Orion’s house the family sat
at breakfast. He came in carrying a gun.
They had not been expecting him, and there was a general
outcry, and a rush in his direction. He warded
them off, holding the butt of the gun in front of
him.

“You wouldn’t let me buy a gun,”
he said, “so I bought one myself, and I am going
to use it, now, in self-defense.”

“You, Sam! You, Sam!” cried Jane
Clemens. “Behave yourself,” for she
was wary of a gun.

Then he had had his joke and gave himself into his
mother’s arms.

XX

KEOKUK DAYS

Orion wished his brother to remain with him in the
Muscatine office, but the young man declared he must
go to St. Louis and earn some money before he would
be able to afford that luxury: He returned to
his place on the St. Louis Evening News, where he
remained until late winter or early spring of the
following year.

He lived at this time with a Pavey family, probably
one of the Hannibal Paveys, rooming with a youth named
Frank E. Burrough, a journeyman chair-maker with a
taste for Dickens, Thackeray, Scott, and Disraeli.
Burrough had really a fine literary appreciation for
his years, and the boys were comrades and close friends.
Twenty-two years later Mark Twain exchanged with Burrough
some impressions of himself at that earlier time.
Clemens wrote:

MydearBurrough,—­As
you describe me I can picture myself as I was 22
years ago. The portrait is correct. You think
I have grown some; upon my word there was room
for it. You have described a callow fool,
a self-sufficient ass, a mere human tumble-bug, stern
in air, heaving at his bit of dung, imagining that
he is remodeling the world and is entirely capable
of doing it right.... That is what I was
at 19-20.

Orion Clemens in the mean time had married and removed
to Keokuk. He had married during a visit to that
city, in the casual, impulsive way so characteristic
of him, and the fact that he had acquired a wife in
the operation seemed at first to have escaped his
inner consciousness. He tells it himself; he
says:

Page 60

At sunrise on the next morning after
the wedding we left in a stage for Muscatine.
We halted for dinner at Burlington. After despatching
that meal we stood on the pavement when the stage drove
up, ready for departure. I climbed in, gathered
the buffalo robe around me, and leaned back unconscious
that I had anything further to do. A gentleman
standing on the pavement said to my wife, “Miss,
do you go by this stage?” I said, “Oh,
I forgot!” and sprang out and helped her
in. A wife was a new kind of possession to which
I had not yet become accustomed; I had forgotten
her.

Orion’s wife had been Mary Stotts; her mother
a friend of Jane Clemens’s girlhood. She
proved a faithful helpmate to Orion; but in those early
days of marriage she may have found life with him rather
trying, and it was her homesickness that brought them
to Keokuk. Brother Sam came up from St. Louis,
by and by, to visit them, and Orion offered him five
dollars a week and board to remain. He accepted.
The office at this time, or soon after, was located
on the third floor of 52 Main Street, in the building
at present occupied by the Paterson Shoe Company.
Henry Clemens, now seventeen, was also in Orion’s
employ, and a lad by the name of Dick Hingham.
Henry and Sam slept in the office, and Dick came in
for social evenings. Also a young man named Edward
Brownell, who clerked in the book-store on the ground
floor.

These were likely to be lively evenings. A music
dealer and teacher, Professor Isbell, occupied the
floor just below, and did not care for their diversions.
He objected, but hardly in the right way. Had
he gone to Samuel Clemens gently, he undoubtedly would
have found him willing to make any concessions.
Instead, he assailed him roughly, and the next evening
the boys set up a lot of empty wine-bottles, which
they had found in a barrel in a closet, and, with
stones for balls, played tenpins on the office floor.
This was Dick and Sam; Henry declined to join the
game. Isbell rushed up-stairs and battered on
the door, but they paid no attention. Next morning
he waited for the young men and denounced them wildly.
They merely ignored him, and that night organized a
military company, made up of themselves and a new
German apprentice-boy, and drilled up and down over
the singing-class. Dick Hingham led these military
manoeuvers. He was a girlish sort of a fellow,
but he had a natural taste for soldiering. The
others used to laugh at him. They called him
a disguised girl, and declared he would run if a gun
were really pointed in his direction. They were
mistaken; seven years later Dick died at Fort Donelson
with a bullet in his forehead: this, by the way.

Isbell now adopted new tactics. He came up very
pleasantly and said:

“I like your military practice better than your
tenpin exercise, but on the whole it seems to disturb
the young ladies. You see how it is yourself.
You couldn’t possibly teach music with a company
of raw recruits drilling overhead—­now,
could you? Won’t you please stop it?
It bothers my pupils.”

Page 61

Sam Clemens regarded him with mild surprise.

“Does it?” he said, very deliberately.
“Why didn’t you mention it before?
To be sure we don’t want to disturb the young
ladies.”

They gave up the horse-play, and not only stopped
the disturbance, but joined one of the singing—­classes.
Samuel Clemens had a pretty good voice in those days
and could drum fairly well on a piano and guitar.
He did not become a brilliant musician, but he was
easily the most popular member of the singing-class.

They liked his frank nature, his jokes, and his humor;
his slow, quaint fashion of speech. The young
ladies called him openly and fondly a “fool”—­a
term of endearment, as they applied it meaning only
that he kept them in a more or less constant state
of wonder and merriment; and indeed it would have
been hard for them to say whether he was really light-minded
and frivolous or the wisest of them all. He was
twenty now and at the age for love-making; yet he
remained, as in Hannibal, a beau rather than a suitor,
good friend and comrade to all, wooer of none.
Ella Creel, a cousin on the Lampton side, a great
belle; also Ella Patterson (related through Orion’s
wife and generally known as “Ick"), and Belle
Stotts were perhaps his favorite companions, but there
were many more. He was always ready to stop and
be merry with them, full of his pranks and pleasantries;
though they noticed that he quite often carried a book
under his arm—­a history or a volume of Dickens
or the tales of Edgar Allan Poe.

He read at odd moments; at night voluminously—­until
very late, sometimes. Already in that early day
it was his habit to smoke in bed, and he had made
him an Oriental pipe of the hubble-bubble variety,
because it would hold more and was more comfortable
than the regular short pipe of daytime use.

But it had its disadvantages. Sometimes it would
go out, and that would mean sitting up and reaching
for a match and leaning over to light the bowl which
stood on the floor. Young Brownell from below
was passing upstairs to his room on the fourth floor
one night when he heard Sam Clemens call. The
two were great chums by this time, and Brownell poked
his head in at the door.

“I would, only I knew you’d be along in
a few minutes and would do it for me.”

Brownell scratched the necessary match, stooped down,
and applied it.

“What are you reading, Sam?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing much—­a so-called funny
book—­one of these days I’ll write
a funnier book than that, myself.”

Brownell laughed.

“No, you won’t, Sam,” he said.
“You are too lazy ever to write a book.”

A good many years later when the name “Mark
Twain” had begun to stand for American humor
the owner of it gave his “Sandwich Island”
lecture in Keokuk. Speaking of the unreliability
of the islanders, he said: “The king is,
I believe, one of the greatest liars on the face of
the earth, except one; and I am very sorry to locate
that one right here in the city of Keokuk, in the
person of Ed Brownell.”

Page 62

The Keokuk episode in Mark Twain’s life was
neither very long nor very actively important.
It extended over a period of less than two years —­two
vital years, no doubt, if all the bearings could be
known—­but they were not years of startling
occurrence.

Yet he made at least one beginning there: at
a printers’ banquet he delivered his first after-dinner
speech; a hilarious speech—­its humor of
a primitive kind. Whatever its shortcomings, it
delighted his audience, and raised him many points
in the public regard. He had entered a field
of entertainment in which he would one day have no
rival. They impressed him into a debating society
after that, and there was generally a stir of attention
when Sam Clemens was about to take the floor.

Orion Clemens records how his brother undertook to
teach the German apprentice music.

“There was an old guitar in the office and Sam
taught Fritz a song beginning:

“Grasshopper sitting
on a sweet-potato vine,
Turkey came along and yanked
him from behind.”

The main point in the lesson was in giving to the
word “yanked” the proper expression and
emphasis, accompanied by a sweep of the fingers across
the strings. With serious face and deep earnestness
Fritz in his broken English would attempt these lines,
while his teacher would bend over and hold his sides
with laughter at each ridiculous effort. Without
intending it, Fritz had his revenge. One day his
tormentor’s hand was caught in the press when
the German boy was turning the wheel. Sam called
to him to stop, but the boy’s mind was slow to
grasp the situation. The hand was badly wounded,
though no bones were broken. In due time it recovered,
its power and dexterity, but the trace of the scars
remained.

Orion’s printing-office was not a prosperous
one; he had not the gift of prosperity in any form.
When he found it difficult to pay his brother’s
wages, he took him into partnership, which meant that
Sam got no wages at all, barely a living, for the
office could not keep its head above water.

The junior partner was not disturbed, however.
He cared little for money in those days, beyond his
actual needs, and these were modest enough. His
mother, now with Pamela, was amply provided for.
Orion himself tells how his business dwindled away.
He printed a Keokuk directory, but it did not pay
largely. He was always too eager for the work;
too low in his bid for it. Samuel Clemens in
this directory is set down as “an antiquarian”
a joke, of course, though the point of it is now lost.

Only two of his Keokuk letters have been preserved.
The first indicates the general disorder of the office
and a growing dissatisfaction. It is addressed
to his mother and sister and bears date of June 10,
1856.

Page 63

I don’t like to work at too many
things at once. They take Henry and Dick
away from me, too. Before we commenced the Directory,
—­[Orion printed two editions of the
directory. This was probably the second one.]—­I
could tell before breakfast just how much work could
be done during the day, and manage accordingly—­but
now, they throw all my plans into disorder by
taking my hands away from their work....
I am not getting along well with the job-work.
I can’t work blindly—­without
system. I gave Dick a job yesterday, which I
calculated he could set in two hours and I could
work off on the press in three, and therefore
just finish it by supper-time, but he was transferred
to the Directory, and the job, promised this morning,
remains untouched. Through all the great pressure
of job- work lately, I never before failed in
a promise of the kind . . .

The other letter is dated two months later, August
5th. It was written to Henry, who was visiting
in St. Louis or Hannibal at the time, and introduces
the first mention of the South American fever, which
now possessed the writer. Lynch and Herndon had
completed their survey of the upper Amazon, and Lieutenant
Herndon’s account of the exploration was being
widely read. Poring over the book nights, young
Clemens had been seized with a desire to go to the
headwaters of the South American river, there to collect
coca and make a fortune. All his life he was subject
to such impulses as that, and ways and means were
not always considered. It did not occur to him
that it would be difficult to get to the Amazon and
still more difficult to ascend the river. It was
his nature to see results with a dazzling largeness
that blinded him to the detail of their achievement.
In the “Turning-point” article already
mentioned he refers to this. He says:

That was more than fifty years ago.
In all that time my temperament has not changed
by even a shade. I have been punished many and
many a time, and bitterly, for doing things and
reflecting afterward, but these tortures have
been of no value to me; I still do the thing commanded
by Circumstance and Temperament, and reflect afterward.
Always violently. When I am reflecting on
these occasions, even deaf persons can hear me
think.

In the letter to Henry we see that his resolve was
already made, his plans matured; also that Orion had
not as yet been taken into full confidence.

Ma knows my determination,
but even she counsels me to keep it from
Orion. She says I can
treat him as I did her when I started to St.
Louis and went to New York—­I
can start for New York and go to South
America.

He adds that Orion had promised him fifty or one hundred
dollars, but that he does not depend upon it, and
will make other arrangements. He fears obstacles
may be put in his way, and he will bring various influences
to bear.

Page 64

I shall take care that Ma and Orion
are plentifully supplied with South American books:
They have Herndon’s report now. Ward and
the Dr. and myself will hold a grand consultation
to-night at the office. We have agreed that
no more shall be admitted into our company.

He had enlisted those two adventurers in his enterprise:
a Doctor Martin and the young man, Ward. They
were very much in earnest, but the start was not made
as planned, most likely for want of means.

Young Clemens, however, did not give up the idea.
He made up his mind to work in the direction of his
desire, following his trade and laying by money for
the venture. But Fate or Providence or Accident—­whatever
we may choose to call the unaccountable—­stepped
in just then, and laid before him the means of turning
another sharp corner in his career. One of those
things happened which we refuse to accept in fiction
as possible; but fact has a smaller regard for the
credibilities.

As in the case of the Joan of Arc episode (and this
adds to its marvel), it was the wind that brought
the talismanic gift. It was a day in early November—­bleak,
bitter, and gusty, with curling snow; most persons
were indoors. Samuel Clemens, going down Main
Street, saw a flying bit of paper pass him and lodge
against the side of a building. Something about
it attracted him and he captured it. It was a
fifty-dollar bill. He had never seen one before,
but he recognized it. He thought he must be having
a pleasant dream.

The temptation came to pocket his good-fortune and
say nothing. His need of money was urgent, but
he had also an urgent and troublesome conscience;
in the end he advertised his find.

“I didn’t describe it very particularly,
and I waited in daily fear that the owner would turn
up and take away my fortune. By and by I couldn’t
stand it any longer. My conscience had gotten
all that was coming to it. I felt that I must
take that money out of danger.”

In the “Turning-point” article he says:
“I advertised the find and left for the Amazon
the same day,” a statement which we may accept
with a literary discount.

As a matter of fact, he remained ample time and nobody
ever came for the money. It may have been swept
out of a bank or caught up by the wind from some counting-room
table. It may have materialized out of the unseen—­who
knows? At all events it carried him the first
stage of a journey, the end of which he little dreamed.

XXI

SCOTCHMAN NAMED MACFARLANE

Page 65

He concluded to go to Cincinnati, which would be on
the way either to New York or New Orleans (he expected
to sail from one of these points), but first paid
a brief visit to his mother in St. Louis, for he had
a far journey and along absence in view. Jane
Clemens made him renew his promise as to cards and
liquor, and gave him her blessing. He had expected
to go from St. Louis to Cincinnati, but a new idea—­a
literary idea—­came to him, and he returned
to Keokuk. The Saturday Post, a Keokuk weekly,
was a prosperous sheet giving itself certain literary
airs. He was in favor with the management, of
which George Rees was the head, and it had occurred
to him that he could send letters of his travels to
the Post—­for, a consideration. He may
have had a still larger ambition; at least, the possibility
of a book seems to have been in his consciousness.
Rees agreed to take letters from him at five dollars
each—­good payment for that time and place.
The young traveler, jubilant in the prospect of receiving
money for literature, now made another start, this
time by way of Quincy, Chicago, and Indianapolis according
to his first letter in the Post.—­[Supplied
by Thomas Rees, of the Springfield (Illinois) Register,
son of George Rees named.]

This letter is dated Cincinnati, November 14, 1856,
and it is not a promising literary production.
It was written in the exaggerated dialect then regarded
as humorous, and while here and there are flashes of
the undoubted Mark Twain type, they are few and far
between. The genius that a little more than ten
years later would delight the world flickered feebly
enough at twenty-one. The letter is a burlesque
account of the trip to Cincinnati. A brief extract
from it, as characteristic as any, will serve.

I went down one night to the railroad
office there, purty close onto the Laclede House,
and bought about a quire o’ yaller paper, cut
up into tickets—­one for each railroad
in the United States, I thought, but I found out
afterwards that the Alexandria and Boston Air-Line
was left out—­and then got a baggage
feller to take my trunk down to the boat, where
he spilled it out on the levee, bustin’ it open
and shakin’ out the contents, consisting
of “guides” to Chicago, and “guides”
to Cincinnati, and travelers’ guides, and all
kinds of sich books, not excepting a “guide
to heaven,” which last aint much use to
a Teller in Chicago, I kin tell you. Finally,
that fast packet quit ringing her bell, and started
down the river—­but she hadn’t gone
morn a mile, till she ran clean up on top of a sand-bar,
whar she stuck till plum one o’clock, spite
of the Captain’s swearin’ —­and
they had to set the whole crew to cussin’ at
last afore they got her off.

This is humor, we may concede, of that early American
type which a little later would have its flower in
Nasby and Artemus Ward. Only careful examination
reveals in it a hint of the later Mark Twain.
The letters were signed “Snodgrass,” and
there are but two of them. The second, dated
exactly four months after the first, is in the same
assassinating dialect, and recounts among other things
the scarcity of coal in Cincinnati and an absurd adventure
in which Snodgrass has a baby left on his hands.

Page 66

From the fewness of the letters we may assume that
Snodgrass found them hard work, and it is said he
raised on the price. At all events, the second
concluded the series. They are mainly important
in that they are the first of his contributions that
have been preserved; also the first for which he received
a cash return.

He secured work at his trade in Cincinnati at the
printing-office of Wrightson & Co., and remained there
until April, 1857. That winter in Cincinnati
was eventless enough, but it was marked by one notable
association—­one that beyond doubt forwarded
Samuel Clemens’s general interest in books,
influenced his taste, and inspired in him certain
views and philosophies which he never forgot.

He lodged at a cheap boarding-house filled with the
usual commonplace people, with one exception.
This exception was a long, lank, unsmiling Scotchman
named Macfarlane, who was twice as old as Clemens and
wholly unlike him—­without humor or any
comprehension of it. Yet meeting on the common
plane of intellect, the two became friends. Clemens
spent his evenings in Macfarlane’s room until
the clock struck ten; then Macfarlane grilled a herring,
just as the Englishman Sumner in Philadelphia had done
two years before, and the evening ended.

Macfarlane had books, serious books: histories,
philosophies, and scientific works; also a Bible and
a dictionary. He had studied these and knew them
by heart; he was a direct and diligent talker.
He never talked of himself, and beyond the statement
that he had acquired his knowledge from reading, and
not at school, his personality was a mystery.
He left the house at six in the morning and returned
at the same hour in the evening. His hands were
hardened from some sort of toil-mechanical labor,
his companion thought, but he never knew. He would
have liked to know, and he watched for some reference
to slip out that would betray Macfarlane’s trade;
but this never happened.

What he did learn was that Macfarlane was a veritable
storehouse of abstruse knowledge; a living dictionary,
and a thinker and philosopher besides. He had
at least one vanity: the claim that he knew every
word in the English dictionary, and he made it good.
The younger man tried repeatedly to discover a word
that Macfarlane could not define.

Perhaps Macfarlane was vain of his other mental attainments,
for he never tired of discoursing upon deep and grave
matters, and his companion never tired of listening.
This Scotch philosopher did not always reflect the
conclusions of others; he had speculated deeply and
strikingly on his own account. That was a good
while before Darwin and Wallace gave out—­their
conclusions on the Descent of Man; yet Macfarlane was
already advancing a similar philosophy. He went
even further: Life, he said, had been developed
in the course of ages from a few microscopic seed-germs—­from
one, perhaps, planted by the Creator in the dawn of
time, and that from this beginning development on

Page 67

an ascending scale had finally produced man.
Macfarlane said that the scheme had stopped there,
and failed; that man had retrograded; that man’s
heart was the only bad one in the animal kingdom:
that man was the only animal capable of malice, vindictiveness,
drunkenness—­almost the only animal that
could endure personal uncleanliness. He said
that man’s intellect was a depraving addition
to him which, in the end, placed him in a rank far
below the other beasts, though it enabled him to keep
them in servitude and captivity, along with many members
of his own race.

They were long, fermenting discourses that young Samuel
Clemens listened to that winter in Macfarlane’s
room, and those who knew the real Mark Twain and his
philosophies will recognize that those evenings left
their impress upon him for life.

XXII

THE OLD CALL OF THE RIVER

When spring came, with budding life and quickening
impulses; when the trees in the parks began to show
a hint of green, the Amazonian idea developed afresh,
and the would-be coca-hunter prepared for his expedition.
He had saved a little money—­enough to take
him to New Orleans—­and he decided to begin
his long trip with a peaceful journey down the Mississippi,
for once, at least, to give himself up to that indolent
luxury of the majestic stream that had been so large
a part of his early dreams.

The Ohio River steamers were not the most sumptuous
craft afloat, but they were slow and hospitable.
The winter had been bleak and hard. “Spring
fever” and a large love of indolence had combined
in that drowsy condition which makes one willing to
take his time.

Mark Twain tells us in Life on the Mississippi that
he “ran away,” vowing never to return
until he could come home a pilot, shedding glory.
This is a literary statement. The pilot ambition
had never entirely died; but it was coca and the Amazon
that were uppermost in his head when he engaged passage
on the Paul Jones for New Orleans, and so conferred
immortality on that ancient little craft. He bade
good-by to Macfarlane, put his traps aboard, the bell
rang, the whistle blew, the gang-plank was hauled
in, and he had set out on a voyage that was to continue
not for a week or a fortnight, but for four years—­four
marvelous, sunlit years, the glory of which would
color all that followed them.

In the Mississippi book the author conveys the impression
of being then a boy of perhaps seventeen. Writing
from that standpoint he records incidents that were
more or less inventions or that happened to others.
He was, in reality, considerably more than twenty-one
years old, for it was in April, 1857, that he went
aboard the Paul Jones; and he was fairly familiar
with steamboats and the general requirements of piloting.
He had been brought up in a town that turned out pilots;
he had heard the talk of their trade. One at
least of the Bowen boys was already on the river while

Page 68

Sam Clemens was still a boy in Hannibal, and had often
been home to air his grandeur and dilate on the marvel
of his work. That learning the river was no light
task Sam Clemens very well knew. Nevertheless,
as the little boat made its drowsy way down the river
into lands that grew ever pleasanter with advancing
spring, the old “permanent ambition” of
boyhood stirred again, and the call of the far-away
Amazon, with its coca and its variegated zoology,
grew faint.

Horace Bixby, pilot of the Paul Jones, then a man
of thirty-two, still living (1910) and at the wheel,—­[The
writer of this memoir interviewed Mr. Bixby personally,
and has followed his phrasing throughout.]—­was
looking out over the bow at the head of Island No.
35 when he heard a slow, pleasant voice say:

“Good morning.”

Bixby was a clean-cut, direct, courteous man.

“Good morning, sir,” he said, briskly,
without looking around.

As a rule Mr. Bixby did not care for visitors in the
pilot-house. This one presently came up and stood
a little behind him.

“How would you like a young man to learn the
river?” he said.

The pilot glanced over his shoulder and saw a rather
slender, loose-limbed young fellow with a fair, girlish
complexion and a great tangle of auburn hair.

“I wouldn’t like it. Cub pilots are
more trouble than they’re worth. A great
deal more trouble than profit.”

The applicant was not discouraged.

“I am a printer by trade,” he went on,
in his easy, deliberate way. “It doesn’t
agree with me. I thought I’d go to South
America.”

Bixby kept his eye on the river; but a note of interest
crept into his voice.

“What makes you pull your words that way?”
("pulling” being the river term for drawling),
he asked.

The young man had taken a seat on the visitors’
bench.

“You’ll have to ask my mother,”
he said, more slowly than ever. “She pulls
hers, too.”

Pilot Bixby woke up and laughed; he had a keen sense
of humor, and the manner of the reply amused him.
His guest made another advance.

“Do you know the Bowen boys?” he asked—­“pilots
in the St. Louis and New Orleans trade?”

“I know them well—­all three of them.
William Bowen did his first steering for me; a mighty
good boy, too. Had a Testament in his pocket
when he came aboard; in a week’s time he had
swapped it for a pack of cards. I know Sam, too,
and Bart.”

“Old schoolmates of mine in Hannibal. Sam
and Will especially were my chums.”

“Come over and stand by the side of me,”
he said. “What is your name?”

The applicant told him, and the two stood looking
at the sunlit water.

“Do you drink?”

“No.”

“Do you gamble?”

“No, Sir.”

“Do you swear?”

“Not for amusement; only under pressure.”

“Do you chew?”

“No, sir, never; but I must smoke.”

Page 69

“Did you ever do any steering?” was Bixby’s
next question.

“I have steered everything on the river but
a steamboat, I guess.”

“Very well; take the wheel and see what you
can do with a steamboat. Keep her as she is—­toward
that lower cottonwood, snag.”

Bixby had a sore foot and was glad of a little relief.
He sat down on the bench and kept a careful eye on
the course. By and by he said:

“There is just one way that I would take a young
man to learn the river: that is, for money.”

“What do you charge?”

“Five hundred dollars, and I to be at no expense
whatever.”

In those days pilots were allowed to carry a learner,
or “cub,” board free. Mr. Bixby meant
that he was to be at no expense in port, or for incidentals.
His terms looked rather discouraging.

“I haven’t got five hundred dollars in
money,” Sam said; “I’ve got a lot
of Tennessee land worth twenty-five cents an acre;
I’ll give you two thousand acres of that.”

Bixby dissented.

“No; I don’t want any unimproved real
estate. I have too much already.”

Sam reflected upon the amount he could probably borrow
from Pamela’s husband without straining his
credit.

“Well, then, I’ll give you one hundred
dollars cash and the rest when I earn it.”

Something about this young man had won Horace Bixby’s
heart. His slow, pleasant speech; his unhurried,
quiet manner with the wheel, his evident sincerity
of purpose—­these were externals, but beneath
them the pilot felt something of that quality of mind
or heart which later made the world love Mark Twain.
The terms proposed were agreed upon. The deferred
payments were to begin when the pupil had learned the
river and was receiving pilot’s wages.
During Mr. Bixby’s daylight watches his pupil
was often at the wheel, that trip, while the pilot
sat directing him and nursing his sore foot.
Any literary ambitions Samuel Clemens may have had
grew dim; by the time they had reached New Orleans
he had almost forgotten he had been a printer, and
when he learned that no ship would be sailing to the
Amazon for an indefinite period the feeling grew that
a directing hand had taken charge of his affairs.

From New Orleans his chief did not return to Cincinnati,
but went to St. Louis, taking with him his new cub,
who thought it fine, indeed, to come steaming up to
that great city with its thronging water-front; its
levee fairly packed with trucks, drays, and piles
of freight, the whole flanked with a solid mile of
steamboats lying side by side, bow a little up-stream,
their belching stacks reared high against the blue—­a
towering front of trade. It was glorious to nose
one’s way to a place in that stately line, to
become a unit, however small, of that imposing fleet.
At St. Louis Sam borrowed from Mr. Moffett the funds
necessary to make up his first payment, and so concluded
his contract. Then, when he suddenly found himself
on a fine big boat, in a pilot-house so far above the
water that he seemed perched on a mountain—­a
“sumptuous temple”—­his happiness
seemed complete.

Page 70

XXIII

THE SUPREME SCIENCE

In his Mississippi book Mark Twain has given us a
marvelous exposition of the science of river-piloting,
and of the colossal task of acquiring and keeping
a knowledge requisite for that work. He has not
exaggerated this part of the story of developments
in any detail; he has set down a simple confession.

Serenely enough he undertook the task of learning
twelve hundred miles of the great changing, shifting
river as exactly and as surely by daylight or darkness
as one knows the way to his own features. As already
suggested, he had at least an inkling of what that
undertaking meant. His statement that he “supposed
all that a pilot had to do was to keep his boat in
the river” is not to be accepted literally.
Still he could hardly have realized the full majesty
of his task; nobody could do that —­not
until afterward.

Horace Bixby was a “lightning” pilot with
a method of instruction as direct and forcible as
it was effective. He was a small man, hot and
quick-firing, though kindly, too, and gentle when he
had blown off. After one rather pyrotechnic misunderstanding
as to the manner of imparting and acquiring information
he said:

“My boy, you must get a little memorandum-book,
and every time I tell you a thing put it down right
away. There’s only one way to be a pilot,
and that is to get this entire river by heart.
You have to know it just like A B C.”

So Sam Clemens got the little book, and presently
it “fairly bristled” with the names of
towns, points, bars, islands, bends, and reaches, but
it made his heart ache to think that he had only half
of the river set down; for, as the “watches”
were four hours off and four hours on, there were
long gaps during which he had slept.

The little note-book still exists—­thin
and faded, with black water-proof covers—­its
neat, tiny, penciled notes still, telling, the story
of that first trip. Most of them are cryptographic
abbreviations, not readily deciphered now. Here
and there is an easier line:

MERIWEATHER’S
bend

1/4 less 3—­[Depth of
water. One-quarter less than three
fathoms.]——­run shape of upper
bar and go into the low place in
willows about 200(ft.) lower down than last year.

One simple little note out of hundreds far more complicated.
It would take days for the average mind to remember
even a single page of such statistics. And those
long four-hour gaps where he had been asleep, they
are still there, and somehow, after more than fifty
years, the old heart-ache is still in them. He
got a new book, maybe, for the next trip, and laid
this one away.

Page 71

There is but one way to account for the fact that
the man whom the world knew as Mark Twain—­dreamy,
unpractical, and indifferent to details—­ever
persisted in acquiring knowledge like that—­in
the vast, the absolutely limitless quantity necessary
to Mississippi piloting. It lies in the fact
that he loved the river in its every mood and aspect
and detail, and not only the river, but a steam boat;
and still more, perhaps, the freedom of the pilot’s
life and its prestige. Wherever he has written
of the river—­and in one way or another
he was always writing of it we feel the claim of the
old captivity and that it still holds him. In
the Huckleberry Finn book, during those nights and
days with Huck and Nigger Jim on the raft—­whether
in stormlit blackness, still noontide, or the lifting
mists of morning—­we can fairly “smell”
the river, as Huck himself would say, and we know
that it is because the writer loved it with his heart
of hearts and literally drank in its environment and
atmosphere during those halcyon pilot days.

So, in his love lay the secret of his marvelous learning,
and it is recorded (not by himself, but by his teacher)
that he was an apt pupil. Horace Bixby has more
than once declared:

“Sam was always good-natured, and he had a natural
taste for the river. He had a fine memory and
never forgot anything I told him.”

Mark Twain himself records a different opinion of
his memory, with the size of its appalling task.
It can only be presented in his own words. In
the pages quoted he had mastered somewhat of the problem,
and had begun to take on airs. His chief was
a constant menace at such moments:

One day he turned on me suddenly
with this settler:

“What is the shape of
Walnut Bend?”

He might as well have asked me my grandmother’s
opinion of protoplasm. I reflected respectfully,
and then said I didn’t know it had any particular
shape. My gun-powdery chief went off with a bang,
of course, and then went on loading and firing until
he was out of adjectives.... I waited.
By and by he said:

“My boy, you’ve got to know
the shape of the river perfectly. It is all
there is left to steer by on a very dark night.
Everything is blotted out and gone. But mind
you, it hasn’t the same shape in the night
that it has in the daytime.”

“How on earth am I ever
going to learn it, then?”

“How do you follow a
hall at home in the dark? Because you know the
shape of it. You can’t
see it.”

“Do you mean to say
that I’ve got to know all the million trifling
variations of shape in the
banks of this interminable river as well
as I know the shape of the
front hall at home?”

“On my honor, you’ve
got to know them better than any man ever did
know the shapes of the halls
in his own house.”

“I wish I was dead!”

“Now, I don’t
want to discourage you, but——­”

Page 72

“Well, pile it on me;
I might as well have it now as another time.”

“You see, this has got to be learned;
there isn’t any getting around it.
A clear starlight night throws such heavy shadows that,
if you didn’t know the shape of a shore
perfectly, you would claw away from every bunch
of timber, because you would take the black shadow
of it for a solid cape; and, you see, you would
be getting scared to death every fifteen minutes
by the watch. You would be fifty yards from shore
all the time when you ought to be within fifty feet
of it. You can’t see a snag in one
of those shadows, but you know exactly where it
is, and the shape of the river tells you when you are
coming to it. Then there’s your pitch-dark
night; the river is a very different shape on
a pitch-dark night from what it is on a starlight
night. All shores seem to be straight lines, then,
and mighty dim ones, too; and you’d run
them for straight lines, only you know better.
You boldly drive your boat right into what seems to
be a solid, straight wall (you know very well that
in reality there is a curve there), and that wall
falls back and makes way for you. Then there’s
your gray mist. You take a night when there’s
one of these grisly, drizzly, gray mists, and then
there isn’t any particular shape to a shore.
A gray mist would tangle the head of the oldest
man that ever lived. Well, then, different kinds
of moonlight change the shape of the river in
different ways. You see——­”

“Oh, don’t say any more,
please! Have I got to learn the shape of the
river according to all these five hundred thousand
different ways? If I tried to carry all that
cargo in my head it would make me stoop-shouldered.”

“No! you only learn the shape
of the river; and you learn it with such absolute
certainty that you can always steer by the shape that’s
in your head, and never mind the one that’s before
your eyes.”

“Very well, I’ll
try it; but, after I have learned it, can I depend
on it? Will it keep the
same form, and not go fooling around?”

Before Mr. Bixby could answer,
Mr. W. came in to take the watch, and
he said:

“Bixby, you’ll have to look
out for President’s island, and all that country
clear away up above the Old Hen and Chickens.
The banks are caving and the shape of the shores
changing like everything. Why, you wouldn’t
know the point about 40. You can go up inside
the old sycamore snag now.”

So that question was answered.
Here were leagues of shore changing shape.
My spirits were down in the mud again. Two things
seemed pretty apparent to me. One was that
in order to be a pilot a man had got to learn
more than any one man ought to be allowed to know;
and the other was that he must learn it all over
again in a different way every twenty-four hours.

I went to work now to learn the shape

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of the river; and of all the eluding and ungraspable
objects that ever I tried to get mind or hands
on, that was the chief. I would fasten my eyes
upon a sharp, wooded point that projected far
into the river some miles ahead of me and go to
laboriously photographing its shape upon my brain;
and just as I was beginning to succeed to my satisfaction
we would draw up to it, and the exasperating thing
would begin to melt away and fold back into the
bank!

It was plain that I had got to learn
the shape of the river in all the different ways
that could be thought of—­upside down, wrong
end first, inside out, fore-and-aft, and “thort-ships,”—­and
then know what to do on gray nights when it hadn’t
any shape at all. So I set about it.
In the course of time I began to get the best of this
knotty lesson, and my self-complacency moved to
the front once more. Mr. Bixby was all fixed
and ready to start it to the rear again. He opened
on me after this fashion:

“How much water did
we have in the middle crossing at Hole-in-The-
Wall, trip before last?”

I considered this an outrage.
I said:

“Every trip down and
up the leadsmen are singing through that
tangled place for three-quarters
of an hour on a stretch. How do
you reckon I can remember
such a mess as that?”

“My boy, you’ve got to remember
it. You’ve got to remember the exact
spot and the exact marks the boat lay in when we had
the shoalest water, in every one of the five hundred
shoal places between St. Louis and New Orleans;
and you mustn’t get the shoal soundings
and marks of one trip mixed up with the shoal soundings
and marks of another, either, for they’re
not often twice alike. You must keep them
separate.”

When I came to myself again,
I said:

“When I get so that I can do that,
I’ll be able to raise the dead, and then
I won’t have to pilot a steamboat to make a living.
I want to retire from this business. I want
a slush-bucket and a brush; I’m only fit
for a roustabout. I haven’t got brains enough
to be a pilot; and if I had I wouldn’t have
strength enough to carry them around, unless I
went on crutches.”

“Now drop that!
When I say I’ll learn a man the river I mean
it.
And you can depend on it,
I’ll learn him or kill him.”

We have quoted at length from this chapter because
it seems of very positive importance here. It
is one of the most luminous in the book so far as
the mastery of the science of piloting is concerned,
and shows better than could any other combination
of words something of what is required of the learner.
It does not cover the whole problem, by any means—­Mark
Twain himself could not present that; and even considering
his old-time love of the river and the pilot’s
trade, it is still incredible that a man of his temperament
could have persisted, as he did, against such obstacles.

Page 74

XXIV

THE RIVER CURRICULUM

He acquired other kinds of knowledge. As the
streets of Hannibal in those early days, and the printing-offices
of several cities, had taught him human nature in
various unvarnished aspects, so the river furnished
an added course to that vigorous education. Morally,
its atmosphere could not be said to be an improvement
on the others. Navigation in the West had begun
with crafts of the flat-boat type—­their
navigators rude, hardy men, heavy drinkers, reckless
fighters, barbaric in their sports, coarse in their
wit, profane in everything. Steam-boatmen were
the natural successors of these pioneers—­a
shade less coarse, a thought less profane, a veneer
less barbaric. But these things were mainly “above
stairs.” You had but to scratch lightly
a mate or a deck-hand to find the old keel-boatman
savagery. Captains were overlords, and pilots
kings in this estate; but they were not angels.
In Life on the Mississippi Clemens refers to his chief’s
explosive vocabulary and tells us how he envied the
mate’s manner of giving an order. It was
easier to acquire those things than piloting, and,
on the whole, quicker. One could improve upon
them, too, with imagination and wit and a natural gift
for terms. That Samuel Clemens maintained his
promise as to drink and cards during those apprentice
days is something worth remembering; and if he did
not always restrict his profanity to moments of severe
pressure or sift the quality of his wit, we may also
remember that he was an extreme example of a human
being, in that formative stage which gathers all as
grist, later to refine it for the uses and delights
of men.

He acquired a vast knowledge of human character.
He says:

In that brief, sharp schooling I got
personally and familiarly acquainted with all
the different types of human nature that are to be
found in fiction, biography, or history. When
I find a well- drawn character in fiction or biography,
I generally take a warm personal interest in him,
for the reason that I have, known him before—­met
him on the river.

Undoubtedly the river was a great school for the study
of life’s broader philosophies and humors:
philosophies that avoid vague circumlocution and aim
at direct and sure results; humors of the rugged and
vigorous sort that in Europe are known as “American”
and in America are known as “Western.”
Let us be thankful that Mark Twain’s school was
no less than it was—­and no more.

The demands of the Missouri River trade took Horace
Bixby away from the Mississippi, somewhat later, and
he consigned his pupil, according to custom, to another
pilot—­it is not certain, now, to just which
pilot, but probably to Zeb Leavenworth or Beck Jolly,
of the John J. Roe. The Roe was a freight-boat,
“as slow as an island and as comfortable as a
farm.” In fact, the Roe was owned and conducted
by farmers, and Sam Clemens thought if John Quarles’s

Page 75

farm could be set afloat it would greatly resemble
that craft in the matter of good-fellowship, hospitality,
and speed. It was said of her that up-stream she
could even beat an island, though down-stream she
could never quite overtake the current, but was a
“love of a steamboat” nevertheless.
The Roe was not licensed to carry passengers, but
she always had a dozen “family guests”
aboard, and there was a big boiler-deck for dancing
and moonlight frolics, also a piano in the cabin.
The young pilot sometimes played on the piano and
sang to his music songs relating to the “grasshopper
on the sweet-potato vine,” or to an old horse
by the name of Methusalem:

Took him down and sold him in
Jerusalem,
A long time ago.

There were forty-eight stanzas about this ancient
horse, all pretty much alike; but the assembled company
was not likely to be critical, and his efforts won
him laurels. He had a heavenly time on the John
J. Roe, and then came what seemed inferno by contrast.
Bixby returned, made a trip or two, then left and
transferred him again, this time to a man named Brown.
Brown had a berth on the fine new steamer Pennsylvania,
one of the handsomest boats on the river, and young
Clemens had become a fine steersman, so it is not
unlikely that both men at first were gratified by
the arrangement.

But Brown was a fault-finding, tyrannical chief, ignorant,
vulgar, and malicious. In the Mississippi book
the author gives his first interview with Brown, also
his last one. For good reasons these occasions
were burned into his memory, and they may be accepted
as substantially correct. Brown had an offensive
manner. His first greeting was a surly question.

“Are you Horace Bigsby’s cub?”

“Bixby” was usually pronounced “Bigsby”
on the river, but Brown made it especially obnoxious
and followed it up with questions and comments and
orders still more odious. His subordinate soon
learned to detest him thoroughly. It was necessary,
however, to maintain a respectable deportment—­custom,
discipline, even the law, required that—­but
it must have been a hard winter and spring the young
steersman put in during those early months of 1858,
restraining himself from the gratification of slaying
Brown. Time would bring revenge—­a tragic
revenge and at a fearful cost; but he could not guess
that, and he put in his spare time planning punishments
of his own.

I could imagine myself killing Brown;
there was no law against that, and that was the
thing I always used to do the moment I was abed.
Instead of going over my river in my mind, as was
my duty, I threw business aside for pleasure and
killed Brown. I killed Brown every night
for a month; not in old, stale, commonplace ways, but
in new and picturesque ones—­ways that
were sometimes surprising for freshness of design
and ghastly for situation and environment.

Once when Brown had been more insulting than usual
his subordinate went to bed and killed him in “seventeen
different ways—­all of them new.”

Page 76

He had made an effort at first to please Brown, but
it was no use. Brown was the sort of a man that
refused to be pleased; no matter how carefully his
subordinate steered, he as always at him.

“Here,” he would shout, “where are
you going now? Pull her down! Pull her down!
Don’t you hear me? Dod-derned mud-cat!”

His assistant lost all desire to be obliging to such
a person and even took occasion now and then to stir
him up. One day they were steaming up the river
when Brown noticed that the boat seemed to be heading
toward some unusual point.

“Here, where are you heading for now?”
he yelled. “What in nation are you steerin’
at, anyway? Deyned numskull!”

“Why,” said Sam, in unruffled deliberation,
“I didn’t see much else I could steer
for, and I was heading for that white heifer on the
bank.”

“Get away from that wheel! and get outen this
pilothouse!” yelled Brown. “You ain’t
fit to become no pilot!”

Which was what Sam wanted. Any temporary relief
from the carping tyranny of Brown was welcome.

He had been on the river nearly a year now, and, though
universally liked and accounted a fine steersman,
he was receiving no wages. There had been small
need of money for a while, for he had no board to pay;
but clothes wear out at last, and there were certain
incidentals. The Pennsylvania made a round trip
in about thirty-five days, with a day or two of idle
time at either end. The young pilot found that
he could get night employment, watching freight on
the New Orleans levee, and thus earn from two and
a half to three dollars for each night’s watch.
Sometimes there would be two nights, and with a capital
of five or six dollars he accounted himself rich.

“It was a desolate experience,” he said,
long afterward, “watching there in the dark
among those piles of freight; not a sound, not a living
creature astir. But it was not a profitless one:
I used to have inspirations as I sat there alone those
nights. I used to imagine all sorts of situations
and possibilities. Those things got into my books
by and by and furnished me with many a chapter.
I can trace the effect of those nights through most
of my books in one way and another.”

Many of the curious tales in the latter half of the
Mississippi book came out of those long night-watches.
It was a good time to think of such things.

XXV

LOVE-MAKING AND ADVENTURE

Of course, life with Brown was not all sorrow.
At either end of the trip there was respite and recreation.
In St. Louis, at Pamela’s there was likely to
be company: Hannibal friends mostly, schoolmates—­girls,
of course. At New Orleans he visited friendly
boats, especially the John J. Roe, where he was generously
welcomed. One such visit on the Roe he never
forgot. A young girl was among the boat’s
guests that trip —­another Laura, fifteen,
winning, delightful. They met, and were mutually
attracted; in the life of each it was one of those
bright spots which are likely to come in youth:
one of those sudden, brief periods of romance, love—­call
it what you will the thing that leads to marriage,
if pursued.

Page 77

“I was not four inches from that girl’s
elbow during our waking hours for the next three days.”

Then came a sudden interruption: Zeb Leavenworth
came flying aft shouting:

“The Pennsylvania is backing out.”

A flutter of emotion, a fleeting good-by, a flight
across the decks, a flying leap from romance back
to reality, and it was all over. He wrote her,
but received no reply. He never saw her again,
never heard from her for forty-eight years, when both
were married, widowed, and old. She had not received
his letter.

Even on the Pennsylvania life had its interests.
A letter dated March 9, 1858, recounts a delightfully
dangerous night-adventure in the steamer’s yawl,
hunting for soundings in the running ice.

Then the fun commenced. We made
fast a line 20 fathoms long, to the bow of the
yawl, and put the men (both crews) to it like horses
on the shore. Brown, the pilot, stood in
the bow, with an oar, to keep her head out, and
I took the tiller. We would start the men, and
all would go well till the yawl would bring up
on a heavy cake of ice, and then the men would
drop like so many tenpins, while Brown assumed
the horizontal in the bottom of the boat. After
an hour’s hard work we got back, with ice
half an inch thick on the oars. Sent back
and warped up the other yawl, and then George (George
Ealer, the other pilot) and myself took a double
crew of fresh men and tried it again. This
time we found the channel in less than half an
hour, and landed on an island till the Pennsylvania
came along and took us off. The next day
was colder still. I was out in the yawl twice,
and then we got through, but the infernal steamboat
came near running over us.... We sounded Hat
Island, warped up around a bar, and sounded again—­but
in order to understand our situation you will
have to read Dr. Kane. It would have been impossible
to get back to the boat. But the Maria Denning
was aground at the head of the island—­they
hailed us—­we ran alongside, and they
hoisted us in and thawed us out. We had then been
out in the yawl from four o’clock in the
morning till half past nine without being near
a fire. There was a thick coating of ice over
men, and yawl, ropes and everything else, and we
looked like rock- candy statuary.

This was the sort of thing he loved in those days.
We feel the writer’s evident joy and pride in
it. In the same letter he says: “I
can’t correspond with the paper, because when
one is learning the river he is not allowed to do
or think about anything else.” Then he mentions
his brother Henry, and we get the beginning of that
tragic episode for which, though blameless, Samuel
Clemens always held himself responsible.

Page 78

Henry was doing little or nothing here
(St. Louis), and I sent him to our clerk to work
his way for a trip, measuring wood-piles, counting
coal-boxes, and doing other clerkly duties, which he
performed satisfactorily. He may go down with
us again.

Henry Clemens was about twenty at this time, a handsome,
attractive boy of whom his brother was lavishly fond
and proud. He did go on the next trip and continued
to go regularly after that, as third clerk in line
of promotion. It was a bright spot in those hard
days with Brown to have Henry along. The boys
spent a good deal of their leisure with the other
pilot, George Ealer, who “was as kindhearted
as Brown wasn’t,” and quoted Shakespeare
and Goldsmith, and played the flute to his fascinated
and inspiring audience. These were things worth
while. The young steersman could not guess that
the shadow of a long sorrow was even then stretching
across the path ahead.

Yet in due time he received a warning, a remarkable
and impressive warning, though of a kind seldom heeded.
One night, when the Pennsylvania lay in St. Louis,
he slept at his sister’s house and had this
vivid dream:

He saw Henry, a corpse, lying in a metallic burial
case in the sitting-room, supported on two chairs.
On his breast lay a bouquet of flowers, white, with
a single crimson bloom in the center.

When he awoke, it was morning, but the dream was so
vivid that he believed it real. Perhaps something
of the old hypnotic condition was upon him, for he
rose and dressed, thinking he would go in and look
at his dead brother. Instead, he went out on
the street in the early morning and had walked to
the middle of the block before it suddenly flashed
upon him that it was only a dream. He bounded
back, rushed to the sitting-room, and felt a great
trembling revulsion of joy when he found it really
empty. He told Pamela the dream, then put it out
of his mind as quickly as he could. The Pennsylvania
sailed from St. Louis as usual, and made a safe trip
to New Orleans.

A safe trip, but an eventful one; on it occurred that
last interview with Brown, already mentioned.
It is recorded in the Mississippi book, but cannot
be omitted here. Somewhere down the river (it
was in Eagle Bend) Henry appeared on the hurricane
deck to bring an order from the captain for a landing
to be made a little lower down. Brown was somewhat
deaf, but would never confess it. He may not
have understood the order; at all events he gave no
sign of having heard it, and went straight ahead.
He disliked Henry as he disliked everybody of finer
grain than himself, and in any case was too arrogant
to ask for a repetition. They were passing the
landing when Captain Klinefelter appeared on deck and
called to him to let the boat come around, adding:

“Didn’t Henry tell you to land here?”

“No, sir.”

Captain. Klinefelter turned to Sam:

“Didn’t you hear him?”

Page 79

“Yes, sir.”

Brown said: “Shut your mouth! You
never heard anything of the kind.”

By and by Henry came into the pilot-house, unaware
of any trouble. Brown set upon him in his ugliest
manner.

“Here, why didn’t you tell me we had got
to land at that plantation?” he demanded.

Henry was always polite, always gentle.

“I did tell you, Mr. Brown.”

“It’s a lie.”

Sam Clemens could stand Brown’s abuse of himself,
but not of Henry. He said: “You lie
yourself. He did tell you.”

Brown was dazed for a moment and then he shouted:

“I’ll attend to your case in half a minute!”
and ordered Henry out of the pilot-house.

The boy had started, when Brown suddenly seized him
by the collar and struck him in the face.—­[In
the Mississippi book the writer states that Brown
started to strike Henry with a large piece of coal;
but, in a letter written soon after the occurrence
to Mrs. Orion Clemens, he says: “Henry
started out of the pilot-house-Brown jumped up and
collared him —­turned him half-way around
and struck him in the face!-and him nearly six feet
high-struck my little brother. I was wild from
that moment. I left the boat to steer herself,
and avenged the insult—­and the captain
said I was right."]—­Instantly Sam was upon
Brown, with a heavy stool, and stretched him on the
floor. Then all the bitterness and indignation
that had been smoldering for months flamed up, and,
leaping upon Brown and holding him with his knees,
he pounded him with his fists until strength and fury
gave out. Brown struggled free, then, and with
pilot instinct sprang to the wheel, for the vessel
had been drifting and might have got into trouble.
Seeing there was no further danger, he seized a spy-glass
as a weapon.

“Get out of this here pilot-house,” he
raged.

But his subordinate was not afraid of him now.

“You should leave out the ‘here,’”
he drawled, critically. “It is understood,
and not considered good English form.”

“You should say, ‘Don’t give me
any of your airs,’” Sam said, sweetly,
“and the last half of your sentence almost defies
correction.”

A group of passengers and white-aproned servants,
assembled on the deck forward, applauded the victor.

Brown turned to the wheel, raging and growling.
Clemens went below, where he expected Captain Klinefelter
to put him in irons, perhaps, for it was thought to
be felony to strike a pilot. The officer took
him into his private room and closed the door.
At first he looked at the culprit thoughtfully, then
he made some inquiries:

“Did you strike him
first?” Captain Klinefelter asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“What with?”

“A stool, sir.”

“Hard?”

“Middling, sir.”

Page 80

“Did it knock him down?”

“He—­he fell,
sir.”

“Did you follow it up?
Did you do anything further?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did you do?”

“Pounded him, sir.”

“Pounded him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you pound him much—­that
is, severely?”

“One might call it that,
sir, maybe.”

“I am deuced glad of it!
Hark ye, never mention that I said that. You
have been guilty of a great crime; and don’t
ever be guilty of it again on this boat, but—­lay
for him ashore! Give him a good sound thrashing;
do you hear? I’ll pay the expenses.”—­["Life
on the Mississippi.”]

Captain Klinefelter told him to clear out, then, and
the culprit heard him enjoying himself as the door
closed behind him. Brown, of course, forbade
him the pilothouse after that, and he spent the rest
of the trip “an emancipated slave” listening
to George Ealer’s flute and his readings from
Goldsmith and Shakespeare; playing chess with him sometimes,
and learning a trick which he would use himself in
the long after-years—­that of taking back
the last move and running out the game differently
when he saw defeat.

Brown swore that he would leave the boat at New Orleans
if Sam Clemens remained on it, and Captain Klinefelter
told Brown to go. Then when another pilot could
not be obtained to fill his place, the captain offered
to let Clemens himself run the daylight watches, thus
showing his confidence in the knowledge of the young
steersman, who had been only a little more than a
year at the wheel. But Clemens himself had less
confidence and advised the captain to keep Brown back
to St. Louis. He would follow up the river by
another boat and resume his place as steersman when
Brown was gone. Without knowing it, he may have
saved his life by that decision.

It is doubtful if he remembered his recent disturbing
dream, though some foreboding would seem to have hung
over him the night before the Pennsylvania sailed.
Henry liked to join in the night-watches on the levee
when he had finished his duties, and the brothers often
walked the round chatting together. On this particular
night the elder spoke of disaster on the river.
Finally he said:

“In case of accident, whatever you do, don’t
lose your head—­the passengers will do that.
Rush for the hurricane deck and to the life-boat,
and obey the mate’s orders. When the boat
is launched, help the women and children into it.
Don’t get in yourself. The river is only
a mile wide. You can swim ashore easily enough.”

It was good manly advice, but it yielded a long harvest
of sorrow.

XXVI

Thetragedyofthe “Pennsylvania”

Captain Klinefelter obtained his steersman a pass
on the A. T. Lacey, which left two days behind the
Pennsylvania. This was pleasant, for Bart Bowen
had become captain of that fine boat. The Lacey
touched at Greenville, Mississippi, and a voice from
the landing shouted:

Page 81

“The Pennsylvania is blown up just below Memphis,
at Ship Island! One hundred and fifty lives lost!”

Nothing further could be learned there, but that evening
at Napoleon a Memphis extra reported some of the particulars.
Henry Clemens’s name was mentioned as one of
those, who had escaped injury. Still farther up
the river they got a later extra. Henry was again
mentioned; this time as being scalded beyond recovery.
By the time they reached Memphis they knew most of
the details: At six o’clock that warm mid-June
morning, while loading wood from a large flat-boat
sixty miles below Memphis, four out of eight of the
Pennsylvania’s boilers had suddenly exploded
with fearful results. All the forward end of
the boat had been blown out. Many persons had
been killed outright; many more had been scalded and
crippled and would die. It was one of those hopeless,
wholesale steamboat slaughters which for more than
a generation had made the Mississippi a river of death
and tears.

Samuel Clemens found his brother stretched upon a
mattress on the floor of an improvised hospital—­a
public hall—­surrounded by more than thirty
others more or less desperately injured. He was
told that Henry had inhaled steam and that his body
was badly scalded. His case was considered hopeless.

Henry was one of those who had been blown into the
river by the explosion. He had started to swim
for the shore, only a few hundred yards away, but
presently, feeling no pain and believing himself unhurt,
he had turned back to assist in the rescue of the others.
What he did after that could not be clearly learned.
The vessel had taken fire; the rescued were being
carried aboard the big wood-boat still attached to
the wreck. The fire soon raged so that the rescuers
and all who could be saved were driven into the wood-flat,
which was then cut adrift and landed. There the
sufferers had to lie in the burning sun many hours
until help could come. Henry was among those who
were insensible by that time. Perhaps he had
really been uninjured at first and had been scalded
in his work of rescue; it will never be known.

His brother, hearing these things, was thrown into
the deepest agony and remorse. He held himself
to blame for everything; for Henry’s presence
on the boat; for his advice concerning safety of others;
for his own absence when he might have been there
to help and protect the boy. He wanted to telegraph
at once to his mother and sister to come, but the
doctors persuaded him to wait—­just why,
he never knew. He sent word of the disaster to
Orion, who by this time had sold out in Keokuk and
was in East Tennessee studying law; then he set himself
to the all but hopeless task of trying to bring Henry
back to life. Many Memphis ladies were acting
as nurses, and one, a Miss Wood, attracted by the boy’s
youth and striking features, joined in the desperate
effort. Some medical students had come to assist
the doctors, and one of these also took special interest
in Henry’s case. Dr. Peyton, an old Memphis
practitioner, declared that with such care the boy
might pull through.

Page 82

But on the fourth night he was considered to be dying.
Half delirious with grief and the strain of watching,
Samuel Clemens wrote to his mother and to his sister-in-law
in Tennessee. The letter to Orion Clemens’s
wife has been preserved.

Memphis, Tenn.,
Friday, June 18, 1858.

DearsisterMollie,—­Long
before this reaches you my poor Henry—­my
darling, my pride, my glory, my all will have finished
his blameless career, and the light of my life
will have gone out in utter darkness. The
horrors of three days have swept over me—­they
have blasted my youth and left me an old man before
my time. Mollie, there are gray hairs in
my head to-night. For forty-eight hours I labored
at the bedside of my poor burned and bruised but uncomplaining
brother, and then the star of my hope went out and
left me in the gloom of despair. Men take
me by the hand and congratulate me, and call me
“lucky” because I was not on the Pennsylvania
when she blew up! May God forgive them, for they
know not what they say.

I was on the Pennsylvania five minutes
before she left N. Orleans, and I must tell you
the truth, Mollie—­three hundred human beings
perished by that fearful disaster. But may
God bless Memphis, the noblest city on the face
of the earth. She has done her duty by these
poor afflicted creatures—­especially Henry,
for he has had five—­aye, ten, fifteen,
twenty times the care and attention that any one
else has had. Dr. Peyton, the best physician in
Memphis (he is exactly like the portraits of Webster),
sat by him for 36 hours. There are 32 scalded
men in that room, and you would know Dr. Peyton
better than I can describe him if you could follow
him around and hear each man murmur as he passes,
“May the God of Heaven bless you, Doctor!”
The ladies have done well, too. Our second mate,
a handsome, noble-hearted young fellow, will die.
Yesterday a beautiful girl of 15 stooped timidly
down by his side and handed him a pretty bouquet.
The poor suffering boy’s eyes kindled, his lips
quivered out a gentle “God bless you, Miss,”
and he burst into tears. He made them write
her name on a card for him, that he might not
forget it.

But, alas, this was not all, nor the worst. It
would seem that Samuel Clemens’s cup of remorse
must be always overfull. The final draft that
would embitter his years was added the sixth night
after the accident —­the night that Henry
died. He could never bring himself to write it.
He was never known to speak of it but twice.

Henry had rallied soon after the foregoing letter
had been mailed, and improved slowly that day and
the next: Dr. Peyton came around about eleven
o’clock on the sixth night and made careful examination.
He said:

Page 83

“I believe he is out of danger and will get
well. He is likely to be restless during the
night; the groans and fretting of the others will
disturb him. If he cannot rest without it, tell
the physician in charge to give him one-eighth of
a grain of morphine.”

The boy did wake during the night, and was disturbed
by the complaining of the other sufferers. His
brother told the young medical student in charge what
the doctor had said about the morphine. But morphine
was a new drug then; the student hesitated, saying:

“I have no way of measuring. I don’t
know how much an eighth of a grain would be.”

Henry grew rapidly worse—­more and more
restless. His brother was half beside himself
with the torture of it. He went to the medical
student.

“If you have studied drugs,” he said,
“you ought to be able to judge an eighth of
a grain of morphine.”

The young man’s courage was over-swayed.
He yielded and ladled out in the old-fashioned way,
on the point of a knife-blade, what he believed to
be the right amount. Henry immediately sank into
a heavy sleep. He died before morning. His
chance of life had been infinitesimal, and his death
was not necessarily due to the drug, but Samuel Clemens,
unsparing in his self-blame, all his days carried
the burden of it.

He saw the boy taken to the dead room, then the long
strain of grief, the days and nights without sleep,
the ghastly realization of the end overcame him.
A citizen of Memphis took him away in a kind of daze
and gave him a bed in his house, where he fell into
a stupor of fatigue and surrender. It was many
hours before he woke; when he did, at last, he dressed
and went to where Henry lay. The coffin provided
for the dead were of unpainted wood, but the youth
and striking face of Henry Clemens had aroused a special
interest. The ladies of Memphis had made up a
fund of sixty dollars and bought for him a metallic
case. Samuel Clemens entering, saw his brother
lying exactly as he had seen him in his dream, lacking
only the bouquet of white flowers with its crimson
center—­a detail made complete while he
stood there, for at that moment an elderly lady came
in with a large white bouquet, and in the center of
it was a single red rose.

Orion arrived from Tennessee, and the brothers took
their sorrowful burden to St. Louis, subsequently
to Hannibal, his old home. The death of this
lovely boy was a heavy sorrow to the community where
he was known, for he had been a favorite with all.—­[For
a fine characterization of Henry Clemens the reader
is referred to a letter written by Orion Clemens to
Miss Wood. See Appendix A, at the end of the last
volume.]

From Hannibal the family returned to Pamela’s
home in St. Louis. There one night Orion heard
his brother moaning and grieving and walking the floor
of his room. By and by Sam came in to where Orion
was. He could endure it no longer, he said; he
must, “tell somebody.”

Page 84

Then he poured all the story of that last tragic night.
It has been set down here because it accounts for
much in his after-life. It magnified his natural
compassion for the weakness and blunders of humanity,
while it increased the poor opinion implanted by the
Scotchman Macfarlane of the human being as a divine
invention. Two of Mark Twain’s chief characteristics
were—­consideration for the human species,
and contempt for it.

In many ways he never overcame the tragedy of Henry’s
death. He never really looked young again.
Gray hairs had come, as he said, and they did not
disappear. His face took on the serious, pathetic
look which from that time it always had in repose.
At twenty-three he looked thirty. At thirty he
looked nearer forty. After that the discrepancy
in age and looks became less notable. In vigor,
complexion, and temperament he was regarded in later
life as young for his years, but never in looks.

XXVII

THE PILOT

The young pilot returned to the river as steersman
for George Ealer, whom he loved, and in September
of that year obtained a full license as Mississippi
River pilot.—­[In Life on the Mississippi
he gives his period of learning at from two to two
and a half years; but documentary evidence as well
as Mr. Bixby’s testimony places the apprenticeship
at eighteen months]—­Bixby had returned
by this time, and they were again together, first
on the Crescent City, later on a fine new boat called
the New Falls City. Clemens was still a steersman
when Bixby returned; but as soon as his license was
granted (September 9, 1858) his old chief took him
as full partner.

He was a pilot at last. In eighteen months he
had packed away in his head all the multitude of volatile
statistics and acquired that confidence and courage
which made him one of the elect, a river sovereign.
He knew every snag and bank and dead tree and reef
in all those endless miles between St. Louis and New
Orleans, every cut-off and current, every depth of
water—­the whole story—­by night
and by day. He could smell danger in the dark;
he could read the surface of the water as an open
page. At twenty-three he had acquired a profession
which surpassed all others for absolute sovereignty
and yielded an income equal to that then earned by
the Vice-President of the United States. Boys
generally finish college at about that age, but it
is not likely that any boy ever finished college with
the mass of practical information and training that
was stored away in Samuel Clemens’s head, or
with his knowledge of human nature, his preparation
for battle with the world.

“Not only was he a pilot, but a good one.”
These are Horace Bixby’s words, and he added:

Page 85

“It is the fashion to-day to disparage Sam’s
piloting. Men who were born since he was on the
river and never saw him will tell you that Sam was
never much of a pilot. Most of them will tell
you that he was never a pilot at all. As a matter
of fact, Sam was a fine pilot, and in a day when piloting
on the Mississippi required a great deal more brains
and skill and application than it does now. There
were no signal-lights along the shore in those days,
and no search-lights on the vessels; everything was
blind, and on a dark, misty night in a river full of
snags and shifting sand—­bars and changing
shores, a pilot’s judgment had to be founded
on absolute certainty.”

He had plenty of money now. He could help his
mother with a liberal hand, and he did it. He
helped Orion, too, with money and with advice.
From a letter written toward the end of the year, we
gather the new conditions. Orion would seem to
have been lamenting over prospects, and the young
pilot, strong and exalted in his new estate, urges
him to renewed consistent effort:

What is a government without energy?—­[he
says]—. And what is a man without
energy? Nothing—­nothing at all.
What is the grandest thing in “Paradise
Lost”—­the Arch-Fiend’s terrible
energy! What was the greatest feature in
Napoleon’s character? His unconquerable
energy! Sum all the gifts that man is endowed
with, and we give our greatest share of admiration
to his energy. And to-day, if I were a heathen,
I would rear a statue to Energy, and fall down and
worship it!

I want a man to—­I
want you to—­take up a line of action, and
follow
it out, in spite of the very
devil.

Orion and his wife had returned to Keokuk by this
time, waiting for something in the way of a business
opportunity.

His pilot brother, wrote him more than once letters
of encouragement and council. Here and there
he refers to the tragedy of Henry’s death, and
the shadow it has cast upon his life; but he was young,
he was successful, his spirits were naturally exuberant.
In the exhilaration of youth and health and success
he finds vent at times in that natural human outlet,
self-approval. He not only exhibits this weakness,
but confesses it with characteristic freedom.

Putting all things together, I begin
to think I am rather lucky than otherwise—­a
notion which I was slow to take up. The other
night I was about to “round to” for
a storm, but concluded that I could find a smoother
bank somewhere. I landed five miles below.
The storm came, passed away and did not injure
us. Coming up, day before yesterday, I looked
at the spot I first chose, and half the trees on the
bank were torn to shreds. We couldn’t have
lived 5 minutes in such a tornado. And I
am also lucky in having a berth, while all the
other young pilots are idle. This is the luckiest
circumstance that ever befell me. Not on
account of the wages—­for that is a secondary

Page 86

consideration-but from the fact that the City of Memphis
is the largest boat in the trade, and the hardest
to pilot, and consequently I can get a reputation
on her, which is a thing I never could accomplish
on a transient boat. I can “bank”
in the neighborhood of $100 a month on her, and
that will satisfy me for the present (principally
because the other youngsters are sucking their
fingers). Bless me! what a pleasure there is in
revenge!—­and what vast respect Prosperity
commands! Why, six months ago, I could enter
the “Rooms,” and receive only the customary
fraternal greeting now they say, “Why, how
are you, old fellow—­when did you get in?”

And the young pilots who use to tell
me, patronizingly, that I could never learn the
river cannot keep from showing a little of their chagrin
at seeing me so far ahead of them. Permit me to
“blow my horn,” for I derive a living
pleasure from these things, and I must confess
that when I go to pay my dues, I rather like to let
the d—–­d rascals get a glimpse
of a hundred-dollar bill peeping out from amongst
notes of smaller dimensions whose face I do not exhibit!
You will despise this egotism, but I tell you there
is a “stern joy” in it.

We are dwelling on this period of Mark Twain’s
life, for it was a period that perhaps more than any
other influenced his future years. He became
completely saturated with the river its terms, its
memories, its influence remained a definite factor
in his personality to the end of his days. Moreover,
it was his first period of great triumph. Where
before he had been a subaltern not always even a wage-earner—­now
all in a moment he had been transformed into a high
chief. The fullest ambition of his childhood
had been realized—­more than realized, for
in that day he had never dreamed of a boat or of an
income of such stately proportions. Of great
personal popularity, and regarded as a safe pilot,
he had been given one of the largest, most difficult
of boats. Single-handed and alone he had fought
his way into the company of kings.

And we may pardon his vanity. He could hardly
fail to feel his glory and revel in it and wear it
as a halo, perhaps, a little now and then in the Association
Rooms. To this day he is remembered as a figure
there, though we may believe, regardless of his own
statement, that it was not entirely because of his
success. As the boys of Hannibal had gathered
around to listen when Sam Clemens began to speak, so
we may be certain that the pilots at St. Louis and
New Orleans laid aside other things when he had an
observation to make or a tale to tell.

He was much given to spinning yarns—­[writes
one associate of those days]—­so funny
that his hearers were convulsed, and yet all the time
his own face was perfectly sober. If he laughed
at all, it must have been inside. It would
have killed his hearers to do that. Occasionally
some of his droll yarns would get into the papers.
He may have written them himself.

Another riverman of those days has recalled a story
he heard Sam Clemens tell:

Page 87

We were speaking of presence
of mind in accidents—­we were always
talking of such things; then
he said:

“Boys, I had great presence of
mind once. It was at a fire. An old man
leaned out of a four-story building calling for help.
Everybody in the crowd below looked up, but nobody
did anything. The ladders weren’t long
enough. Nobody had any presence of mind—­nobody
but me. I came to the rescue. I yelled
for a rope. When it came I threw the old
man the end of it. He caught it and I told him
to tie it around his waist. He did so, and
I pulled him down.”

This was one of the stories that got into print and
traveled far. Perhaps, as the old pilot suggests,
he wrote some of them himself, for Horace Bixby remembers
that “Sam was always scribbling when not at the
wheel.”

But if he published any work in those river-days he
did not acknowledge it later—­with one exception.
The exception was not intended for publication, either.
It was a burlesque written for the amusement of his
immediate friends. He has told the story himself,
more than once, but it belongs here for the reason
that some where out of the general circumstance of
it there originated a pseudonym, one day to become
the best-known in the hemispheres the name Mark Twain.

That terse, positive, peremptory, dynamic pen-name
was first used by an old pilot named Isaiah Sellers—­a
sort of “oldest inhabitant” of the river,
who made the other pilots weary with the scope and
antiquity of his reminiscent knowledge. He contributed
paragraphs of general information and Nestorian opinions
to the New Orleans Picayune, and signed them “Mark
Twain.” They were quaintly egotistical in
tone, usually beginning: “My opinion for
the benefit of the citizens of New Orleans,”
and reciting incidents and comparisons dating as far
back as 1811.

Captain Sellers naturally was regarded as fair game
by the young pilots, who amused themselves by imitating
his manner and general attitude of speech. But
Clemens went further; he wrote at considerable length
a broadly burlesque imitation signed “Sergeant
Fathom,” with an introduction which referred
to the said Fathom as “one of the oldest cub
pilots on the river.” The letter that followed
related a perfectly impossible trip, supposed to have
been made in 1763 by the steamer “the old first
Jubilee” with a “Chinese captain and a
Choctaw crew.” It is a gem of its kind,
and will bear reprint in full today.—­[See
Appendix B, at the end of the last volume.]

The burlesque delighted Bart Bowen, who was Clemens’s
pilot partner on the Edward J. Gay at the time.
He insisted on showing it to others and finally upon
printing it. Clemens was reluctant, but consented.
It appeared in the True Delta (May 8 or 9, 1859),
and was widely and boisterously enjoyed.

It broke Captain Sellers’s literary heart.
He never contributed another paragraph. Mark
Twain always regretted the whole matter deeply, and
his own revival of the name was a sort of tribute
to the old man he had thoughtlessly wounded.
If Captain Sellers has knowledge of material matters
now, he is probably satisfied; for these things brought
to him, and to the name he had chosen, what he could
never himself have achieved —­immortality.

Page 88

XXVIII

PILOTING AND PROPHECY

Those who knew Samuel Clemens best in those days say
that he was a slender, fine-looking man, well dressed—­even
dandified—­given to patent leathers, blue
serge, white duck, and fancy striped shirts. Old
for his years, he heightened his appearance at times
by wearing his beard in the atrocious mutton-chop
fashion, then popular, but becoming to no one, least
of all to him. The pilots regarded him as a great
reader—­a student of history, travels, literature,
and the sciences—­a young man whom it was
an education as well as an entertainment to know.
When not at the wheel, he was likely to be reading
or telling yarns in the Association Rooms.

He began the study of French one day when he passed
a school of languages, where three tongues, French,
German, and Italian, were taught, one in each of three
rooms. The price was twenty-five dollars for one
language, or three for fifty dollars. The student
was provided with a set of cards for each room and
supposed to walk from one apartment to another, changing
tongues at each threshold. With his unusual enthusiasm
and prodigality, the young pilot decided to take all
three languages, but after the first two or three
round trips concluded that for the present French
would do. He did not return to the school, but
kept his cards and bought text-books. He must
have studied pretty faithfully when he was off watch
and in port, for his river note-book contains a French
exercise, all neatly written, and it is from the Dialogues
of Voltaire.

This old note-book is interesting for other things.
The notes are no longer timid, hesitating memoranda,
but vigorous records made with the dash of assurance
that comes from confidence and knowledge, and with
the authority of one in supreme command. Under
the head of “2d high-water trip—­Jan.,
1861—­Alonzo Child,” we have the story
of a rising river with its overflowing banks, its
blind passages and cut-offs—­all the circumstance
and uncertainty of change.

Good deal of water all over
Coles Creek Chute, 12 or 15 ft. bank
—­could have gone
up shore above General Taylor’s—­too
much drift....

Night—­didn’t
run either 77 or 76 towheads—­8 ft. bank
on main shore
Ozark Chute....

And so on page after page of cryptographic memoranda.
It means little enough to the lay reader, yet one
gets an impression somehow of the swirling, turbulent
water and a lonely figure in that high glassed-in
place peering into the dark for blind land-marks and
possible dangers, picking his way up the dim, hungry
river of which he must know every foot as well as
a man knows the hall of his own home. All the
qualifications must come into play, then memory, judgment,
courage, and the high art of steering. “Steering
is a very high, art,” he says; “one must
not keep a rudder dragging across a boat’s stern
if he wants to get up the river fast.”

Page 89

He had an example of the perfection of this art one
misty night on the Alonzo Child. Nearly fifty
years later, sitting on his veranda in the dark, he
recalled it. He said:

“There was a pilot in those days by the name
of Jack Leonard who was a perfectly wonderful creature.
I do not know that Jack knew anymore about the river
than most of us and perhaps could not read the water
any better, but he had a knack of steering away ahead
of our ability, and I think he must have had an eye
that could see farther into the darkness.

“I had never seen Leonard steer, but I had heard
a good deal about it. I had heard it said that
the crankiest old tub afloat—­one that would
kill any other man to handle—­would obey
and be as docile as a child when Jack Leonard took
the wheel. I had a chance one night to verify
that for myself. We were going up the river,
and it was one of the nastiest nights I ever saw.
Besides that, the boat was loaded in such a way that
she steered very hard, and I was half blind and crazy
trying to locate the safe channel, and was pulling
my arms out to keep her in it. It was one of
those nights when everything looks the same whichever
way you look: just two long lines where the sky
comes down to the trees and where the trees meet the
water with all the trees precisely the same height
—­all planted on the same day, as one of
the boys used to put it—­and not a thing
to steer by except the knowledge in your head of the
real shape of the river. Some of the boats had
what they call a ‘night hawk’ on the jackstaff,
a thing which you could see when it was in the right
position against the sky or the water, though it seldom
was in the right position and was generally pretty
useless.

“I was in a bad way that night and wondering
how I could ever get through it, when the pilot-house
door opened, and Jack Leonard walked in. He was
a passenger that trip, and I had forgotten he was aboard.
I was just about in the worst place and was pulling
the boat first one way, then another, running the
wheel backward and forward, and climbing it like a
squirrel.

“‘Sam,’ he said, ’let me take
the wheel. Maybe I have been over this place
since you have.’

“I didn’t argue the question. Jack
took the wheel, gave it a little turn one way, then
a little turn the other; that old boat settled down
as quietly as a lamb—­went right along as
if it had been broad daylight in a river without snags,
bars, bottom, or banks, or anything that one could
possibly hit. I never saw anything so beautiful.
He stayed my watch out for me, and I hope I was decently
grateful. I have never forgotten it.”

Page 90

The old note-book contained the record of many such
nights as that; but there were other nights, too,
when the stars were blazing out, or when the moon
on the water made the river a wide mysterious way of
speculative dreams. He was always speculating;
the planets and the remote suns were always a marvel
to him. A love of astronomy—­the romance
of it, its vast distances, and its possibilities—­began
with those lonely river-watches and never waned to
his last day. For a time a great comet blazed
in the heavens, a “wonderful sheaf of light”
that glorified his lonely watch. Night after
night he watched it as it developed and then grew dim,
and he read eagerly all the comet literature that
came to his hand, then or afterward. He speculated
of many things: of life, death, the reason of
existence, of creation, the ways of Providence and
Destiny. It was a fruitful time for such meditation;
out of such vigils grew those larger philosophies
that would find expression later, when the years had
conferred the magic gift of phrase.

Life lay all ahead of him then, and during those still
watches he must have revolved many theories of how
the future should be met and mastered. In the
old notebook there still remains a well-worn clipping,
the words of some unknown writer, which he had preserved
and may have consulted as a sort of creed. It
is an interesting little document—­a prophetic
one, the reader may concede:

Howtotakelife.—­Take
it just as though it was—­as it is—­an
earnest, vital, and important affair. Take
it as though you were born to the task of performing
a merry part in it—­as though the world
had awaited for your coming. Take it as though
it was a grand opportunity to do and achieve,
to carry forward great and good schemes; to help
and cheer a suffering, weary, it may be heartbroken,
brother. Now and then a man stands aside from
the crowd, labors earnestly, steadfastly, confidently,
and straightway becomes famous for wisdom, intellect,
skill, greatness of some sort. The world
wonders, admires, idolizes, and it only illustrates
what others may do if they take hold of life with
a purpose. The miracle, or the power that
elevates the few, is to be found in their industry,
application, and perseverance under the promptings
of a brave, determined spirit.

The old note-book contains no record of disasters.
Horace Bixby, who should know, has declared:

“Sam Clemens never had an accident either as
a steersman or as a pilot, except once when he got
aground for a few hours in the bagasse (cane) smoke,
with no damage to anybody though of course there was
some good luck in that too, for the best pilots do
not escape trouble, now and then.”

Bixby and Clemens were together that winter on the
Alonzo Child, and a letter to Orion contains an account
of great feasting which the two enjoyed at a “French
restaurant” in New Orleans—­“dissipating
on a ten-dollar dinner—­tell it not to Ma!”—­where
they had sheepshead fish, oysters, birds, mushrooms,
and what not, “after which the day was too far
gone to do anything.” So it appears that
he was not always reading Macaulay or studying French
and astronomy, but sometimes went frivoling with his
old chief, now his chum, always his dear friend.

Page 91

Another letter records a visit with Pamela to a picture-gallery
in St. Louis where was being exhibited Church’s
“Heart of the Andes.” He describes
the picture in detail and with vast enthusiasm.

“I have seen it several times,” he concludes,
“but it is always a new picture—­totally
new—­you seem to see nothing the second time
that you saw the first.”

Further along he tells of having taken his mother
and the girls—­his cousin Ella Creel and
another—­for a trip down the river to New
Orleans.

Ma was delighted with her trip, but
she was disgusted with the girls for allowing
me to embrace and kiss them—­and she was
horrified at the ‘schottische’ as
performed by Miss Castle and myself. She was
perfectly willing for me to dance until 12 o’clock
at the imminent peril of my going to sleep on
the after-watch—­but then she would top
off with a very inconsistent sermon on dancing in general;
ending with a terrific broadside aimed at that
heresy of heresies, the ‘schottische’.

I took Ma and the girls in a carriage
round that portion of New Orleans where the finest
gardens and residences are to be seen, and, although
it was a blazing hot, dusty day, they seemed hugely
delighted. To use an expression which is commonly
ignored in polite society, they were “hell-bent”
on stealing some of the luscious- looking oranges
from branches which overhung the fence, but I restrained
them.

In another letter of this period we get a hint of
the future Mark Twain. It was written to John
T. Moore, a young clerk on the John J. Roe.

What a fool old Adam was. Had everything
his own way; had succeeded in gaining the love
of the best-looking girl in the neighborhood, but
yet, unsatisfied with his conquest, he had to eat a
miserable little apple. Ah, John, if you
had been in his place you would not have eaten
a mouthful of the apple—­that is, if it had
required any exertion. I have noticed that
you shun exertion. There comes in the difference
between us. I court exertion. I love work.
Why, sir, when I have a piece of work to perform,
I go away to myself, sit down in the shade, and
muse over the coming enjoyment. Sometimes
I am so industrious that I muse too long.

There remains another letter of this period—­a
sufficiently curious document. There was in those
days a famous New Orleans clairvoyant known as Madame
Caprell. Some of the young pilot’s friends
had visited her and obtained what seemed to be satisfying
results. From time to time they had urged him
to visit the fortune-teller, and one idle day he concluded
to make the experiment. As soon as he came away
he wrote to Orion in detail.

Page 92

She’s a very pleasant little lady—­rather
pretty—­about 28—­say 5 feet
2 1/4—­would weigh 116—­has black
eyes and hair—­is polite and intelligent—­used
good language, and talks much faster than I do.

She invited me into the little back
parlor, closed the door; and we were alone.
We sat down facing each other. Then she asked
my age. Then she put her hands before her
eyes a moment, and commenced talking as if she
had a good deal to say and not much time to say it
in. Something after this style:

‘Madame.’ Yours is
a watery planet; you gain your livelihood on the water;
but you should have been a lawyer—­there
is where your talents lie; you might have distinguished
yourself as an orator, or as an editor—­,
you have written a great deal; you write well—­but
you are rather out of practice; no matter—­you
will be in practice some day; you have a superb
constitution, and as excellent health as any man
in the world; you have great powers of endurance; in
your profession your strength holds out against
the longest sieges without flagging; still, the
upper part of your lungs, the top of them, is
slightly affected—­you must take care of
yourself; you do not drink, but you use entirely
too much tobacco; and you must stop it; mind,
not moderate, but stop the use of it, totally; then
I can almost promise you 86, when you will surely
die; otherwise, look out for 28, 31, 34, 47, and
65; be careful—­for you are not of a long-
lived race, that is, on your father’s side;
you are the only healthy member of your family,
and the only one in it who has anything like the
certainty of attaining to a great age—­so,
stop using tobacco, and be careful of yourself....
In some respects you take after your father, but
you are much more like your mother, who belongs to
the long-lived, energetic side of the house....
You never brought all your energies to bear upon
any subject but what you accomplished it —­for
instance, you are self-made, self-educated.

‘S. L. C.’
Which proves nothing.

‘Madame.’ Don’t
interrupt. When you sought your present occupation,
you found a thousand obstacles in your way—­obstacles
unknown—­not even suspected by any save
you and me, since you keep such matter to yourself—­but
you fought your way, and hid the long struggle
under a mask of cheerfulness, which saved your friends
anxiety on your account. To do all this requires
the qualities which I have named.

‘S. L. C.’
You flatter well, Madame.

‘Madame.’ Don’t
interrupt. Up to within a short time you had
always lived from hand to mouth—­now
you are in easy circumstances —­for
which you need give credit to no one but yourself.
The turning-point in your life occurred in 1840-7-8.

‘S. L. C.’
Which was?

Page 93

‘Madame.’ A death,
perhaps, and this threw you upon the world and made
you what you are; it was always intended that you should
make yourself; therefore, it was well that this
calamity occurred as early as it did. You
will never die of water, although your career upon
it in the future seems well sprinkled with misfortune.
You will continue upon the water for some time
yet; you will not retire finally until ten years
from now.... What is your brother’s age?
23—­and a lawyer? and in pursuit of an
office? Well, he stands a better chance than
the other two, and he may get it; he is too visionary—­is
always flying off on a new hobby; this will never do
—­tell him I said so. He is a good
lawyer—­a very good lawyer—­and
a fine speaker—­is very popular and much
respected, and makes many friends; but although
he retains their friendship, he loses their confidence
by displaying his instability of character....
The land he has now will be very valuable after
a while——­ ‘S. L.
C.’ Say 250 years hence, or thereabouts,
Madame——­ ‘Madame.’
No—­less time—­but never mind the
land, that is a secondary consideration—­let
him drop that for the present, and devote himself
to his business and politics with all his might, for
he must hold offices under Government....

After a while you will possess a good
deal of property—­retire at the end
of ten years—­after which your pursuits will
be literary —­try the law—­you
will certainly succeed. I am done now. If
you have any questions to ask—­ask them
freely—­and if it be in my power, I
will answer without reserve—­without reserve.

I asked a few questions of minor importance-paid
her and left-under the decided impression that
going to the fortune-teller’s was just as
good as going to the opera, and cost scarcely a trifle
more —­ergo, I will disguise myself
and go again, one of these days, when other amusements
fail. Now isn’t she the devil? That
is to say, isn’t she a right smart little
woman?

When you want money, let Ma
know, and she will send it. She and
Pamela are always fussing
about change, so I sent them a hundred and
twenty quarters yesterday—­fiddler’s
change enough to last till I
get back, I reckon. Sam.

In the light of preceding and subsequent events, we
must confess that Madame Caprell was “indeed
a right smart little woman.” She made mistakes
enough (the letter is not quoted in full), but when
we remember that she not only gave his profession
at the moment, but at least suggested his career for
the future; that she approximated the year of his
father’s death as the time when he was thrown
upon the world; that she admonished him against his
besetting habit, tobacco; that she read. minutely
not only his characteristics, but his brother Orion’s;
that she outlined the struggle in his conquest of
the river; that she seemingly had knowledge of Orion’s
legal bent and his connection with the Tennessee land,
all seems remarkable enough, supposing, of course,
she had no material means of acquiring knowledge—­one
can never know certainly about such things.

Page 94

XXIX

THE END OF PILOTING

It is curious, however, that Madame Caprell, with
clairvoyant vision, should not have seen an important
event then scarcely more than two months distant:
the breaking-out of the Civil War, with the closing
of the river and the end of Mark Twain’s career
as a pilot. Perhaps these things were so near
as to be “this side” the range of second
sight.

There had been plenty of war-talk, but few of the
pilots believed that war was really coming. Traveling
that great commercial highway, the river, with intercourse
both of North and South, they did not believe that
any political differences would be allowed to interfere
with the nation’s trade, or would be settled
otherwise than on the street corners, in the halls
of legislation, and at the polls. True, several
States, including Louisiana, had declared the Union
a failure and seceded; but the majority of opinions
were not clear as to how far a State had rights in
such a matter, or as to what the real meaning of secession
might be. Comparatively few believed it meant
war. Samuel Clemens had no such belief.
His Madame Caprell letter bears date of February 6,
1861, yet contains no mention of war or of any special
excitement in New Orleans —­no forebodings
as to national conditions.

Such things came soon enough: President Lincoln
was inaugurated on the 4th of March, and six weeks
later Fort Sumter was fired upon. Men began to
speak out then and to take sides.

It was a momentous time in the Association Rooms.
There were pilots who would go with the Union; there
were others who would go with the Confederacy.
Horace Bixby was one of the former, and in due time
became chief of the Union River Service. Another
pilot named Montgomery (Samuel Clemens had once steered
for him) declared for the South, and later commanded
the Confederate Mississippi fleet. They were all
good friends, and their discussions, though warm,
were not always acrimonious; but they took sides.

A good many were not very clear as to their opinions.
Living both North and South as they did, they saw
various phases of the question and divided their sympathies.
Some were of one conviction one day and of another
the next. Samuel Clemens was of the less radical
element. He knew there was a good deal to be
said for either cause; furthermore, he was not then
bloodthirsty. A pilot-house with its elevated
position and transparency seemed a poor place to be
in when fighting was going on.

“I’ll think about it,” he said.
“I’m not very anxious to get up into a
glass perch and be shot at by either side. I’ll
go home and reflect on the matter.”

He did not realize it, but he had made his last trip
as a pilot. It is rather curious that his final
brief note-book entry should begin with his future
nom de plume—­a memorandum of soundings—­“mark
twain,” and should end with the words “no
lead.”

Page 95

He went up the river as a passenger on a steamer named
the Uncle Sam. Zeb Leavenworth was one of the
pilots, and Sam Clemens usually stood watch with him.
They heard war-talk all the way and saw preparations,
but they were not molested, though at Memphis they
basely escaped the blockade. At Cairo, Illinois,
they saw soldiers drilling—­troops later
commanded by Grant. The Uncle Sam came steaming
up toward St. Louis, those on board congratulating
themselves on having come through unscathed. They
were not quite through, however. Abreast of Jefferson
Barracks they suddenly heard the boom of a cannon
and saw a great whorl of smoke drifting in their direction.
They did not realize that it was a signal—­a
thunderous halt—­and kept straight on.
Less than a minute later there was another boom, and
a shell exploded directly in front of the pilot-house,
breaking a lot of glass and destroying a good deal
of the upper decoration. Zeb Leavenworth fell
back into a corner with a yell.

“Good Lord Almighty! Sam;” he said,
“what do they mean by that?”

Clemens stepped to the wheel and brought the boat
around. “I guess they want us to wait a
minute, Zeb,” he said.

They were examined and passed. It was the last
steamboat to make the trip from New Orleans to St.
Louis. Mark Twain’s pilot-days were over.
He would have grieved had he known this fact.

“I loved the profession far better than any
I have followed since,” he long afterward declared,
“and I took a measureless pride in it.”

The dreamy, easy, romantic existence suited him exactly.
A sovereign and an autocrat, the pilot’s word
was law; he wore his responsibilities as a crown.
As long as he lived Samuel Clemens would return to
those old days with fondness and affection, and with
regret that they were no more.

XXX

THE SOLDIER

Clemens spent a few days in St. Louis (in retirement,
for there was a pressing war demand for Mississippi
pilots), then went up to Hannibal to visit old friends.
They were glad enough to see him, and invited him to
join a company of gay military enthusiasts who were
organizing to “help Gov. ‘Claib’
Jackson repel the invader.” A good many
companies were forming in and about Hannibal, and
sometimes purposes were conflicting and badly mixed.
Some of the volunteers did not know for a time which
invader they intended to drive from Missouri soil,
and more than one company in the beginning was made
up of young fellows whose chief ambition was to have
a lark regardless as to which cause they might eventually
espouse.

—­[The military organizations of Hannibal
and Palmyra, in 1861, were as follows: The Marion
Artillery; the Silver Grays; Palmyra Guards; the W.
E. Dennis company, and one or two others. Most
of them were small private affairs, usually composed
of about half-and-half Union and Confederate men,
who knew almost nothing of the questions or conditions,
and disbanded in a brief time, to attach themselves
to the regular service according as they developed
convictions. The general idea of these companies
was a little camping-out expedition and a good time.
One such company one morning received unexpected reinforcements.
They saw the approach of the recruits, and, remarking
how well drilled the new arrivals seemed to be, mistook
them for the enemy and fled.]

Page 96

Samuel Clemens had by this time decided, like Lee,
that he would go with his State and lead battalions
to victory. The “battalion” in this
instance consisted of a little squad of young fellows
of his own age, mostly pilots and schoolmates, including
Sam Bowen, Ed Stevens, and Ab Grimes, about a dozen,
all told. They organized secretly, for the Union
militia was likely to come over from Illinois any time
and look up any suspicious armies that made an open
demonstration. An army might lose enthusiasm
and prestige if it spent a night or two in the calaboose.

So they met in a secret place above Bear Creek Hill,
just as Tom Sawyer’s red-handed bandits had
gathered so long before (a good many of them were
of the same lawless lot), and they planned how they
would sell their lives on the field of glory, just
as Tom Sawyer’s band might have done if it had
thought about playing “War,” instead of
“Indian” and “Pirate” and
“Bandit” with fierce raids on peach orchards
and melon patches. Then, on the evening before
marching away, they stealthily called on their sweethearts—­those
who had them did, and the others pretended sweethearts
for the occasion—­and when it was dark and
mysterious they said good-by and suggested that maybe
those girls would never see them again. And as
always happens in such a case, some of them were in
earnest, and two or three of the little group that
slipped away that night never did come back, and somewhere
sleep in unmarked graves.

The “two Sams”—­Sam Bowen and
Sam Clemens—­called on Patty Gore and Julia
Willis for their good-by visit, and, when they left,
invited the girls to “walk through the pickets”
with them, which they did as far as Bear Creek Hill.
The girls didn’t notice any pickets, because
the pickets were away calling on girls, too, and probably
wouldn’t be back to begin picketing for some
time. So the girls stood there and watched the
soldiers march up Bear Creek Hill and disappear among
the trees.

The army had a good enough time that night, marching
through the brush and vines toward New London, though
this sort of thing grew rather monotonous by morning.
When they took a look at themselves by daylight, with
their nondescript dress and accoutrements, there was
some thing about it all which appealed to one’s
sense of humor rather than to his patriotism.
Colonel Ralls, of Ralls County, however, received them
cordially and made life happier for them with a good
breakfast and some encouraging words. He was
authorized to administer the oath of office, he said,
and he proceeded to do it, and made them a speech besides;
also he sent out notice to some of the neighbors—­to
Col. Bill Splawn, Farmer Nuck Matson, and others—­that
the community had an army on its hands and perhaps
ought to do something for it. This brought in
a number of contributions, provisions, paraphernalia,
and certain superfluous horses and mules, which converted
the battalion into a cavalry, and made it possible

Page 97

for it to move on to the front without further delay.
Samuel Clemens, mounted on a small yellow mule whose
tail had been trimmed down to a tassel at the end
in a style that suggested his name, Paint Brush, upholstered
and supplemented with an extra pair of cowskin boots,
a pair of gray blankets, a home-made quilt, frying-pan,
a carpet sack, a small valise, an overcoat, an old-fashioned
Kentucky rifle, twenty yards of rope, and an umbrella,
was a representative unit of the brigade. The
proper thing for an army loaded like that was to go
into camp, and they did it. They went over on
Salt River, near Florida, and camped not far from
a farm-house with a big log stable; the latter they
used as headquarters. Somebody suggested that
when they went into battle they ought to have short
hair, so that in a hand-to-hand conflict the enemy
could not get hold of it. Tom Lyon found a pair
of sheep-shears in the stable and acted as barber.
They were not very sharp shears, but the army stood
the torture for glory in the field, and a group of
little darkies collected from the farm-house to enjoy
the performance. The army then elected its officers.
William Ely was chosen captain, with Asa Glasscock
as first lieutenant. Samuel Clemens was then voted
second lieutenant, and there were sergeants and orderlies.
There were only three privates when the election was
over, and these could not be distinguished by their
deportment. There was scarcely any discipline
in this army.

Then it set in to rain. It rained by day and
it rained by night. Salt River rose until it
was bank full and overflowed the bottoms. Twice
there was a false night alarm of the enemy approaching,
and the battalion went slopping through the mud and
brush into the dark, picking out the best way to retreat,
plodding miserably back to camp when the alarm was
over. Once they fired a volley at a row of mullen
stalks, waving on the brow of a hill, and once a picket
shot at his own horse that had got loose and had wandered
toward him in the dusk.

The rank and file did not care for picket duty.
Sam Bowen—­ordered by Lieutenant Clemens
to go on guard one afternoon—­denounced his
superior and had to be threatened with court-martial
and death. Sam went finally, but he sat in a
hot open place and swore at the battalion and the war
in general, and finally went to sleep in the broiling
sun. These things began to tell on patriotism.
Presently Lieutenant Clemens developed a boil, and
was obliged to make himself comfortable with some hay
in a horse-trough, where he lay most of the day, violently
denouncing the war and the fools that invented it.
Then word came that “General” Tom Harris,
who was in command of the district, was stopping at
a farmhouse two miles away, living on the fat of the
land.

That settled it. Most of them knew Tom Harris,
and they regarded his neglect of them as perfidy.
They broke camp without further ceremony.

Page 98

Lieutenant Clemens needed assistance to mount Paint
Brush, and the little mule refused to cross the river;
so Ab Grimes took the coil of rope, hitched one end
of it to his own saddle and the other end to Paint
Brush’s neck. Grimes was mounted on a big
horse, and when he started it was necessary for Paint
Brush to follow. Arriving at the farther bank,
Grimes looked around, and was horrified to see that
the end of the rope led down in the water with no
horse and rider in view. He spurred up the bank,
and the hat of Lieutenant Clemens and the ears of Paint
Brush appeared.

“Ah,” said Clemens, as he mopped his face,
“do you know that little devil waded all the
way across?”

A little beyond the river they met General Harris,
who ordered them back to camp. They admonished
him to “go there himself.” They said
they had been in that camp and knew all about it.
They were going now where there was food—­real
food and plenty of it. Then he begged them, but
it was no use. By and by they stopped at a farm-house
for supplies. A tall, bony woman came to the
door:

“You’re secesh, ain’t you?”

They acknowledged that they were defenders of the
cause and that they wanted to buy provisions.
The request seemed to inflame her.

“Provisions!” she screamed. “Provisions
for secesh, and my husband a colonel in the Union
Army. You get out of here!”

She reached for a hickory hoop-pole that stood by
the door, and the army moved on. When they arrived
at Col. Bill Splawn’s that night Colonel
Splawn and his family had gone to bed, and it seemed
unwise to disturb them. The hungry army camped
in the barnyard and crept into the hay-loft to sleep.
Presently somebody yelled “Fire!” One of
the boys had been smoking and started the hay.
Lieutenant Clemens suddenly wakened, made a quick
rolling movement from the blaze, and rolled out of
a big hay-window into the barnyard below. The
rest of the army, startled into action, seized the
burning hay and pitched it out of the same window.
The lieutenant had sprained his ankle when he struck
the ground, and his boil was far from well, but when
the burning hay descended he forgot his disabilities.
Literally and figuratively this was the final straw.
With a voice and vigor suited to the urgencies of
the case, he made a spring from under the burning
stuff, flung off the remnants, and with them his last
vestige of interest in the war. The others, now
that the fire was, out, seemed to think the incident
boisterously amusing. Whereupon the lieutenant
rose up and told them, collectively and individually,
what he thought of them; also he spoke of the war
and the Confederacy, and of the human race at large.
They helped him in, then, for his ankle was swelling
badly. Next morning, when Colonel Splawn had given
them a good breakfast, the army set out for New London.

Page 99

But Lieutenant Clemens never got any farther than
Nuck Matson’s farm-house. His ankle was
so painful by that time that Mrs. Matson had him put
to bed, where he stayed for several weeks, recovering
from the injury and stress of war. A little negro
boy was kept on watch for Union detachments—­they
were passing pretty frequently now—­and when
one came in sight the lieutenant was secluded until
the danger passed. When he was able to travel,
he had had enough of war and the Confederacy.
He decided to visit Orion in Keokuk. Orion was
a Union abolitionist and might lead him to mend his
doctrines.

As for the rest of the army, it was no longer a unit
in the field. Its members had drifted this way
and that, some to return to their occupations, some
to continue in the trade of war. Sam Bowen is
said to have been caught by the Federal troops and
put to sawing wood in the stockade at Hannibal.
Ab (A. C.) Grimes became a noted Confederate spy
and is still among those who have lived to furnish
the details here set down. Properly officered
and disciplined, that detachment would have made as
brave soldiers as any. Military effectiveness
is a matter of leaders and tactics.

Mark Twain’s own Private History of a ‘Campaign
that Failed’ is, of course, built on this episode.
He gives us a delicious account, even if it does not
strikingly resemble the occurrence. The story
might have been still better if he had not introduced
the shooting of the soldier in the dark. The
incident was invented, of course, to present the real
horror of war, but it seems incongruous in this burlesque
campaign, and, to some extent at least, it missed
fire in its intention.

—­[In a book recently published, Mark Twain’s
“nephew” is quoted as authority for the
statement that Mark Twain was detailed for river duty,
captured, and paroled, captured again, and confined
in a tobacco-warehouse in St. Louis, etc.
Mark Twain had but one nephew: Samuel E. Moffett,
whose Biographical Sketch (vol. xxii, Mark Twain’s
Works) contains no such statement; and nothing of the
sort occurred.]

XXXI

OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY

When Madame Caprell prophesied that Orion Clemens
would hold office under government, she must have
seen with true clairvoyant vision. The inauguration
of Abraham Lincoln brought Edward Bates into his Cabinet,
and Bates was Orion’s friend. Orion applied
for something, and got it. James W. Nye had been
appointed Territorial governor of Nevada, and Orion
was made Territorial secretary. You could strain
a point and refer to the office as “secretary
of state,” which was an imposing title.
Furthermore, the secretary would be acting governor
in the governor’s absence, and there would be
various subsidiary honors. When Lieutenant Clemens
arrived in Keokuk, Orion was in the first flush of
his triumph and needed only money to carry him to
the scene of new endeavor. The late lieutenant

Page 100

C. S. A. had accumulated money out of his pilot salary,
and there was no comfortable place just then in the
active Middle West for an officer of either army who
had voluntarily retired from the service. He
agreed that if Orion would overlook his recent brief
defection from the Union and appoint him now as his
(Orion’s) secretary, he would supply the funds
for both overland passages, and they would start with
no unnecessary delay for a country so new that all
human beings, regardless of previous affiliations
and convictions, were flung into the common fusing-pot
and recast in the general mold of pioneer.

The offer was a boon to Orion. He was always
eager to forgive, and the money was vitally necessary.
In the briefest possible time he had packed his belongings,
which included a large unabridged dictionary, and the
brothers were on their way to St. Louis for final leave-taking
before setting out for the great mysterious land of
promise—­the Pacific West. From St.
Louis they took the boat for St. Jo, whence the Overland
stage started, and for six days “plodded”
up the shallow, muddy, snaggy Missouri, a new experience
for the pilot of the Father of Waters.

In fact, the boat might almost as well
have gone to St. Jo by land, for she was walking
most of the time, anyhow—­climbing over reefs
and clambering over snags patiently and laboriously
all day long. The captain said she was a
“bully” boat, and all she wanted was some
“shear” and a bigger wheel. I
thought she wanted a pair of stilts, but I had
the deep sagacity not to say so.’—­[’Roughing
It’.]—­

At St. Jo they paid one hundred and fifty dollars
apiece for their stage fare (with something extra
for the dictionary), and on the twenty-sixth of July,
1861, set out on that long, delightful trip behind
sixteen galloping horses—­or mules—­never
stopping except for meals or to change teams, heading
steadily into the sunset, following it from horizon
to horizon over the billowy plains, across the snow-clad
Rockies, covering the seventeen hundred miles between
St. Jo and Carson City (including a two-day halt in
Salt Lake City) in nineteen glorious days. What
an inspiration in such a trip! In ‘Roughing
It’ he tells it all, and says: “Even
at this day it thrills me through and through to think
of the life, the gladness, and the wild sense of freedom
that used to make the blood dance in my face on those
fine Overland mornings.”

The nights, with the uneven mail-bags for a bed and
the bounding dictionary for company, were less exhilarating;
but then youth does not mind.

All things being now ready, stowed the
uneasy dictionary where it would lie as quiet
as possible, and placed the water-canteen and pistols
where we could find them in the dark. Then we
smoked a final pipe and swapped a final yarn;
after which we put the pipes, tobacco, and bag
of coin in snug holes and caves among the mail- bags,
and made the place as dark as the inside of a cow,

Page 101

as the conductor phrased it in his picturesque
way. It was certainly as dark as any place
could be—­nothing was even dimly visible
in it. And finally we rolled ourselves up
like silkworms, each person in his own blanket,
and sank peacefully to sleep.

Youth loves that sort of thing, despite its inconvenience.
And sometimes the clatter of the pony-rider swept
by in the night, carrying letters at five dollars
apiece and making the Overland trip in eight days;
just a quick beat of hoofs in the distance, a dash,
and a hail from the darkness, the beat of hoofs again,
then only the rumble of the stage and the even, swinging
gallop of the mules. Sometimes they got a glimpse
of the ponyrider by day—­a flash, as it
were, as he sped by. And every morning brought
new scenery, new phases of frontier life, including,
at last, what was to them the strangest phase of all,
Mormonism.

They spent two wonderful days at Salt Lake City, that
mysterious and remote capital of the great American
monarchy, who still flaunts her lawless, orthodox
creed the religion of David and Solomon—­and
thrives. An obliging official made it his business
to show them the city and the life there, the result
of which would be those amusing chapters in ‘Roughing
It’ by and by. The Overland travelers set
out refreshed from Salt Lake City, and with a new
supply of delicacies—­ham, eggs, and tobacco—­things
that make such a trip worth while. The author
of ‘Roughing It’ assures us of this:

Nothing helps scenery like ham and eggs.
Ham and eggs, and after these a pipe—­an
old, rank, delicious pipe—­ham and eggs and
scenery, a “down-grade,” a flying coach,
a fragrant pipe, and a contented heart—­these
make happiness. It is what all the ages have
struggled for.

But one must read all the story of that long-ago trip.
It was a trip so well worth taking, so well worth
recording, so well worth reading and rereading to-day.
We can only read of it now. The Overland stage
long ago made its last trip, and will not start any
more. Even if it did, the life and conditions,
the very scenery itself, would not be the same.

XXXII

THE PIONEER

It was a hot, dusty August 14th that the stage reached
Carson City and drew up before the Ormsby Hotel.
It was known that the Territorial secretary was due
to arrive; and something in the nature of a reception,
with refreshments and frontier hospitality, had been
planned. Governor Nye, formerly police commissioner
in New York City, had arrived a short time before,
and with his party of retainers ("heelers” we
would call them now), had made an imposing entrance.
Perhaps something of the sort was expected with the
advent of the secretary of state. Instead, the
committee saw two way-worn individuals climb down from
the stage, unkempt, unshorn—­clothed in
the roughest of frontier costume, the same they had
put on at St. Jo—­dusty, grimy, slouchy,

Page 102

and weather-beaten with long days of sun and storm
and alkali desert dust. It is not likely there
were two more unprepossessing officials on the Pacific
coast at that moment than the newly arrived Territorial
secretary and his brother: Somebody identified
them, and the committee melted away; the half-formed
plan of a banquet faded out and was not heard of again.
Soap and water and fresh garments worked a transformation;
but that first impression had been fatal to festivities
of welcome.

Carson City, the capital of Nevada, was a “wooden
town,” with a population of two thousand souls.
Its main street consisted of a few blocks of small
frame stores, some of which are still standing.
In ‘Roughing It’ the author writes:

In the middle of the town, opposite
the stores, was a “Plaza,” which is
native to all towns beyond the Rocky Mountains, a large,
unfenced, level vacancy with a Liberty Pole in
it, and very useful as a place for public auctions,
horse trades, and mass-meetings, and likewise
for teamsters to camp in. Two other sides of the
Plaza were faced by stores, offices, and stables.
The rest of Carson City was pretty scattering.

One sees the place pretty clearly from this brief
picture of his, but it requires an extract from a
letter written to his mother somewhat later to populate
it. The mineral excitement was at its height in
those days of the early sixties, and had brought together
such a congress of nations as only the greed for precious
metal can assemble. The sidewalks and streets
of Carson, and the Plaza, thronged all day with a motley
aggregation—­a museum of races, which it
was an education merely to gaze upon. Jane Clemens
had required him to write everything just as it was
—­“no better and no worse.”

Well—­[he says]—­,
“Gold Hill” sells at $5,000 per foot, cash
down; “Wild Cat” isn’t worth
ten cents. The country is fabulously rich in
gold, silver, copper, lead, coal, iron, quicksilver,
marble, granite, chalk, plaster of Paris (gypsum),
thieves, murderers, desperadoes, ladies, children,
lawyers, Christians, Indians, Chinamen, Spaniards,
gamblers, sharpens; coyotes (pronounced ki-yo- ties),
poets, preachers, and jackass rabbits. I overheard
a gentleman say, the other day, that it was “the
d—–­dest country under the sun,”
and that comprehensive conception I fully subscribe
to. It never rains here, and the dew never
falls. No flowers grow here, and no green
thing gladdens the eye. The birds that fly over
the land carry their provisions with them.
Only the crow and the raven tarry with us.
Our city lies in the midst of a desert of the purest,
most unadulterated and uncompromising sand, in which
infernal soil nothing but that fag-end of vegetable
creation, “sage- brush,” ventures
to grow. . . . I said we are situated in a flat,
sandy desert—­true. And surrounded
on all sides by such prodigious mountains that
when you look disdainfully down (from them) upon the

Page 103

insignificant village of Carson, in that instant
you are seized with a burning desire to stretch
forth your hand, put the city in your pocket,
and walk off with it.

As to churches, I believe
they have got a Catholic one here, but,
like that one the New York
fireman spoke of, I believe “they don’t
run her now.”

Carson has been through several phases of change since
this was written —­for better and for worse.
It is a thriving place in these later days, and new
farming conditions have improved the country roundabout.
But it was a desert outpost then, a catch-all for
the human drift which every whirlwind of discovery
sweeps along. Gold and silver hunting and mine
speculations were the industries—­gambling,
drinking, and murder were the diversions—­of
the Nevada capital. Politics developed in due
course, though whether as a business or a diversion
is not clear at this time.

The Clemens brothers took lodging with a genial Irishwoman,
Mrs. Murphy, a New York retainer of Governor Nye,
who boarded the camp-followers. —­[The Mrs,
O’Flannigan of ’Roughing It’.]—­This
retinue had come in the hope of Territorial pickings
and mine adventure—­soldiers of fortune they
were, and a good-natured lot all together. One
of them, Bob Howland, a nephew of the governor, attracted
Samuel Clemens by his clean-cut manner and commanding
eye.

“The man who has that eye doesn’t need
to go armed,” he wrote later. “He
can move upon an armed desperado and quell him and
take him a prisoner without saying a single word.”
It was the same Bob Howland who would be known by
and by as the most fearless man in the Territory; who,
as city marshal of Aurora, kept that lawless camp
in subjection, and, when the friends of a lot of condemned
outlaws were threatening an attack with general massacre,
sent the famous message to Governor Nye: “All
quiet in Aurora. Five men will be hung in an
hour.” And it was quiet, and the programme
was carried out. But this is a digression and
somewhat premature.

Orion Clemens, anxious for laurels, established himself
in the meager fashion which he thought the government
would approve; and his brother, finding neither duties
nor salary attached to his secondary position, devoted
himself mainly to the study of human nature as exhibited
under frontier conditions. Sometimes, when the
nights were cool, he would build a fire in the office
stove, and, with Bob Howland and a few other choice
members of the “Brigade” gathered around,
would tell river yarns in that inimitable fashion
which would win him devoted audiences all his days.
His river life had increased his natural languor of
habit, and his slow speech heightened the lazy impression
which he was never unwilling to convey. His hearers
generally regarded him as an easygoing, indolent good
fellow with a love of humor—­with talent,
perhaps—­but as one not likely ever to set
the world afire. They did not happen to think
that the same inclination which made them crowd about
to listen and applaud would one day win for him the
attention of all mankind.

Page 104

Within a brief time Sam Clemens (he was never known
as otherwise than “Sam” among those pioneers)
was about the most conspicuous figure on the Carson
streets. His great bushy head of auburn hair,
his piercing, twinkling eyes, his loose, lounging
walk, his careless disorder of dress, drew the immediate
attention even of strangers; made them turn to look
a second time and then inquire as to his identity.

He had quickly adapted himself to the frontier mode.
Lately a river sovereign and dandy, in fancy percales
and patent leathers, he had become the roughest of
rough-clad pioneers, in rusty slouch hat, flannel shirt,
coarse trousers slopping half in and half out of the
heavy cowskin boots Always something of a barbarian
in love with the loose habit of unconvention, he went
even further than others and became a sort of paragon
of disarray. The more energetic citizens of Carson
did not prophesy much for his future among them.
Orion Clemens, with the stir and bustle of the official
new broom, earned their quick respect; but his brother—­well,
they often saw him leaning for an hour or more at a
time against an awning support at the corner of King
and Carson streets, smoking a short clay pipe and
staring drowsily at the human kaleidoscope of the
Plaza, scarcely changing his position, just watching,
studying, lost in contemplation—­all of
which was harmless enough, of course, but how could
any one ever get a return out of employment like that?

Samuel Clemens did not catch the mining fever immediately;
there was too much to see at first to consider any
special undertaking. The mere coming to the frontier
was for the present enough; he had no plans. His
chief purpose was to see the world beyond the Rockies,
to derive from it such amusement and profit as might
fall in his way. The war would end, by and by,
and he would go back to the river, no doubt. He
was already not far from homesick for the “States”
and his associations there. He closed one letter:

I heard a military band play “What
Are the Wild Waves Saying” the other night,
and it brought Ella Creel and Belle (Stotts) across
the desert in an instant, for they sang the song
in Orion’s yard the first time I ever heard
it. It was like meeting an old friend. I
tell you I could have swallowed that whole band,
trombone and all, if such a compliment would have
been any gratification to them.

His friends contracted the mining mania; Bob Howland
and Raish Phillips went down to Aurora and acquired
“feet” in mini-claims and wrote him enthusiastic
letters. With Captain Nye, the governor’s
brother, he visited them and was presented with an
interest which permitted him to contribute an assessment
every now and then toward the development of the mine;
but his enthusiasm still languished.

He was interested more in the native riches above
ground than in those concealed under it. He had
heard that the timber around Lake Bigler (Tahoe) promised
vast wealth which could be had for the asking.
The lake itself and the adjacent mountains were said
to be beautiful beyond the dream of art. He decided
to locate a timber claim on its shores.

Page 105

He made the trip afoot with a young Ohio lad, John
Kinney, and the account of this trip as set down in
‘Roughing It’ is one of the best things
in the book. The lake proved all they had expected—­more
than they expected; it was a veritable habitation
of the gods, with its delicious, winy atmosphere,
its vast colonnades of pines, its measureless depths
of water, so clear that to drift on it was like floating
high aloft in mid-nothingness. They staked out
a timber claim and made a semblance of fencing it
and of building a habitation, to comply with the law;
but their chief employment was a complete abandonment
to the quiet luxury of that dim solitude: wandering
among the trees, lounging along the shore, or drifting
on that transparent, insubstantial sea. They did
not sleep in their house, he says:

“It never occurred to us, for one thing; and,
besides, it was built to hold the ground, and that
was enough. We did not wish to strain it.”

They lived by their camp-fire on the borders of the
lake, and one day—­it was just at nightfall—­it
got away from them, fired the forest, and destroyed
their fence and habitation. His picture in ‘Roughing
It’ of the superb night spectacle, the mighty
mountain conflagration reflected in the waters of
the lake, is splendidly vivid. The reader may
wish to compare it with this extract from a letter
written to Pamela at the time.

The level ranks of flame were relieved
at intervals by the standard- bearers, as we called
the tall, dead trees, wrapped in fire, and waving
their blazing banners a hundred feet in the air.
Then we could turn from the scene to the lake,
and see every branch and leaf and cataract of
flame upon its banks perfectly reflected, as in a
gleaming, fiery mirror. The mighty roaring
of the conflagration, together with our solitary
and somewhat unsafe position (for there was no
one within six miles of us), rendered the scene very
impressive. Occasionally one of us would remove
his pipe from his mouth and say, “Superb,
magnificent!—­beautifull—­but—­by
the Lord God Almighty, if we attempt to sleep
in this little patch to-night, we’ll never
live till morning!”

This is good writing too, but it lacks the fancy and
the choice of phrasing which would develop later.
The fire ended their first excursion to Tahoe, but
they made others and located other claims—­claims
in which the “folks at home,” Mr. Moffett,
James Lampton, and others, were included. It
was the same James Lampton who would one day serve
as a model for Colonel Sellers. Evidently Samuel
Clemens had a good opinion of his business capacity
in that earlier day, for he writes:

This is just the country for
cousin Jim to live in. I don’t believe
it would take him six months
to make $100,000 here if he had $3,000
to commence with. I suppose
he can’t leave his family, though.

Further along in the same letter his own overflowing
Seller’s optimism develops.

Page 106

Orion and I have confidence
enough in this country to think that if
the war lets us alone we can
make Mr. Moffett rich without its ever
costing him a cent or a particle
of trouble.

This letter bears date of October 25th, and from it
we gather that a certain interest in mining claims
had by this time developed.

We have got about 1,650 feet
of mining ground, and, if it proves
good, Mr. Moffett’s
name will go in, and if not I can get “feet”
for
him in the spring.

You see, Pamela, the trouble
does not consist in getting mining
ground—­for there
is plenty enough—­but the money to work it
with
after you get it.

He refers to Pamela’s two little children, his
niece Annie and Baby Sam, —­[Samuel E. Moffett,
in later life a well-known journalist and editor.]
—­and promises to enter claims for them—­timber
claims probably—­for he was by no means
sanguine as yet concerning the mines. That was
a long time ago. Tahoe land is sold by the lot,
now, to summer residents. Those claims would
have been riches to-day, but they were all abandoned
presently, forgotten in the delirium which goes only
with the pursuit of precious ores.

XXXIII

THE PROSPECTOR

It was not until early winter that Samuel Clemens
got the real mining infection. Everybody had
it by that time; the miracle is that he had not fallen
an earlier victim. The wildest stories of sudden
fortune were in the air, some of them undoubtedly
true. Men had gone to bed paupers, on the verge
of starvation, and awakened to find themselves millionaires.
Others had sold for a song claims that had been suddenly
found to be fairly stuffed with precious ores.
Cart-loads of bricks—­silver and gold—­daily
drove through the streets.

In the midst of these things reports came from the
newly opened Humboldt region—­flamed up
with a radiance that was fairly blinding. The
papers declared that Humboldt County “was the
richest mineral region on God’s footstool.”
The mountains were said to be literally bursting with
gold and silver. A correspondent of the daily
Territorial Enterprise fairly wallowed in rhetoric,
yet found words inadequate to paint the measureless
wealth of the Humboldt mines. No wonder those
not already mad speedily became so. No wonder
Samuel Clemens, with his natural tendency to speculative
optimism, yielded to the epidemic and became as “frenzied
as the craziest.” The air to him suddenly
began to shimmer; all his thoughts were of “leads”
and “ledges” and “veins”; all
his clouds had silver linings; all his dreams were
of gold. He joined an expedition at once; he
reproached himself bitterly for not having started
earlier.

Page 107

Hurry was the word! We wasted no
time. Our party consisted of four persons—­a
blacksmith sixty years of age, two young lawyers, and
myself. We bought a wagon and two miserable
old horses. We put 1,800 pounds of provisions
and mining tools in the wagon and drove out of
Carson on a chilly December afternoon.

In a letter to his mother he states that besides provisions
and mining tools, their load consisted of certain
luxuries viz., ten pounds of killikinick, Watts’s
Hymns, fourteen decks of cards, Dombey and Son, a
cribbage-board, one small keg of lager-beer, and the
“Carmina Sacra.”

The two young lawyers were A. W.(Gus) Oliver (Oliphant
in ’Roughing It’), and W. H. Clagget.
Sam Clemens had known Billy Clagget as a law student
in Keokuk, and they were brought together now by this
association. Both Clagget and Oliver were promising
young men, and would be heard from in time. The
blacksmith’s name was Tillou (Ballou), a sturdy,
honest soul with a useful knowledge of mining and
the repair of tools. There were also two dogs
in the party—­a small curly-tailed mongrel,
Curney, the property of Mr. Tillou, and a young hound.
The combination seemed a strong one.

It proved a weak one in the matter of horses.
Oliver and Clemens had furnished the team, and their
selection had not been of the best. It was two
hundred miles to Humboldt, mostly across sand.
The horses could not drag their load and the miners
too, so the miners got out. Then they found it
necessary to push.

Not because we were fond of it, Ma—­oh,
no! but on Bunker’s account. Bunker
was the “near” horse on the larboard side,
named after the attorney-general of this Territory.
My horse—­and I am sorry you do not
know him personally, Ma, for I feel toward him, sometimes,
as if he were a blood relation of our family—­he
is so lazy, you know—­my horse—­I
was going to say, was the “off” horse on
the starboard side. But it was on Bunker’s
account, principally, that we pushed behind the
wagon. In fact, Ma, that horse had something on
his mind all the way to Humboldt.—­[S.
L. C. to his mother. Published in the Keokuk
(Iowa) Gate city.]—­

So they had to push, and most of that two hundred
miles through snow and sand storm they continued to
push and swear and groan, sustained only by the thought
that they must arrive at last, when their troubles
would all be at an end, for they would be millionaires
in a brief time and never know want or fatigue any
more.

There were compensations: the camp-fire at night
was cheerful, the food satisfying. They bundled
close under the blankets and, when it was too cold
to sleep, looked up at the stars, while the future
entertainer of kings would spin yarn after yarn that
made his hearers forget their discomforts. Judge
Oliver, the last one of the party alive, in a recent
letter to the writer of this history, says:

Page 108

He was the life of the camp; but sometimes
there would come a reaction and he could hardly
speak for a day or two. One day a pack of
wolves chased us, and the hound Sam speaks of never
stopped to look back till he reached the next
station, many miles ahead.

Judge Oliver adds that an Indian war had just ended,
and that they occasionally passed the charred ruin
of a shack, and new graves: This was disturbing
enough. Then they came to that desolation of desolations,
the Alkali Desert, where the sand is of unknown depth,
where the road is strewn thickly with the carcasses
of dead beasts of burden, the charred remains of wagons,
chains, bolts, and screws, which thirsty emigrants,
grown desperate, have thrown away in the grand hope
of being able, when less encumbered, to reach water.

They traveled all day and night, pushing through that
fierce, waterless waste to reach camp on the other
side. It was three o’clock in the morning
when they got across and dropped down utterly exhausted.
Judge Oliver in his letter tells what happened then:

The sun was high in the heavens when
we were aroused from our sleep by a yelling band
of Piute warriors. We were upon our feet in an
instant. The pictures of burning cabins and
the lonely graves we had passed were in our minds.
Our scalps were still our own, and not dangling
from the belts of our visitors. Sam pulled himself
together, put his hand on his head as if to make
sure he had not been scalped, and then with his
inimitable drawl said: “Boys, they have
left us our scalps. Let’s give them all
the flour and sugar they ask for.”
And we did give them a good supply, for we were grateful.

They were eleven weary days pushing their wagon and
team the two hundred miles to Unionville, Humboldt
County, arriving at last in a driving snow-storm.
Unionville consisted of eleven poor cabins built in
the bottom of a canon, five on one side and six facing
them on the other. They were poor, three-sided,
one-room huts, the fourth side formed by the hill;
the roof, a spread of white cotton. Stones used
to roll down on them sometimes, and Mark Twain tells
of live stock—­specifically of a mule and
cow—­that interrupted the patient, long-suffering
Oliver, who was trying to write poetry, and only complained
when at last “an entire cow came rolling down
the hill, crashed through on the table, and made a
shapeless wreck of everything.”—­[’The
Innocents Abroad.’]

Judge Oliver still does not complain; but he denies
the cow. He says there were no cows in Humboldt
in those days, so perhaps it was only a literary cow,
though in any case it will long survive. Judge
Oliver’s name will go down with it to posterity.

In the letter which Samuel Clemens wrote home he tells
of what they found in Unionville.

Page 109

“National” there was selling
at $50 per foot and assayed $2,496 per ton at
the mint in San Francisco. And the “Alda
Nueva,” “Peru,” “Delirio,”
“Congress,” “Independent,”
and others were immensely rich leads. And
moreover, having winning ways with us, we could get
“feet” enough to make us all rich one
of these days.

“I confess with shame,” says the author
of ‘Roughing It’, “that I expected
to find masses of silver lying all about the ground.”
And he adds that he slipped away from the cabin to
find a claim on his own account, and tells how he
came staggering back under a load of golden specimens;
also how his specimens proved to be only worthless
mica; and how he learned that in mining nothing that
glitters is gold. His account in ‘Roughing
It’ of the Humboldt mining experience is sufficiently
good history to make detail here unnecessary.
Tillou instructed them in prospecting, and in time
they located a fairly promising claim. They went
to work on it with pick and shovel, then with drill
and blasting-powder. Then they gave it up.

“One week of this satisfied me. I resigned.”

They tried to tunnel, but soon resigned again.
It was pleasanter to prospect and locate and trade
claims and acquire feet in every new ledge than it
was to dig-and about as profitable. The golden
reports of Humboldt had been based on assays of selected
rich specimens, and were mainly delirium and insanity.
The Clemens-Clagget-Oliver-Tillou combination never
touched their claims again with pick and shovel, though
their faith, or at least their hope, in them did not
immediately die. Billy Clagget put out his shingle
as notary public, and Gus Oliver put out his as probate
judge. Sam Clemens and Tillou, with a fat-witted,
arrogant Prussian named Pfersdoff (Ollendorf) set out
for Carson City. It is not certain what became
of the wagon and team, or of the two dogs.

The Carson travelers were water-bound at a tavern
on the Carson River (the scene of the “Arkansas”
sketch), with a fighting, drinking lot. Pfersdoff
got them nearly drowned getting away, and finally succeeded
in getting them absolutely lost in the snow.
The author of ‘Roughing It’ tells us how
they gave themselves up to die, and how each swore
off whatever he had in the way of an evil habit, how
they cast their tempters-tobacco, cards, and whisky-into
the snow. He further tells us how next morning,
when they woke to find themselves alive, within a few
rods of a hostelry, they surreptitiously dug up those
things again and, deep in shame and luxury, resumed
their fallen ways: It was the 29th of January
when they reached Carson City. They had been gone
not quite two months, one of which had been spent
in travel. It was a brief period, but it contained
an episode, and it seemed like years.

XXXIV

TERRITORIAL CHARACTERISTICS

Page 110

Meantime, the Territorial secretary had found difficulties
in launching the ship of state. There was no
legislative hall in Carson City; and if Abram Curry,
one of the original owners of the celebrated Gould
and Curry mine—­“Curry—­old
Curry—­old Abe Curry,” as he called
himself—­had not tendered the use of a hall
rent free, the first legislature would have been obliged
to “sit in the desert.” Furthermore,
Orion had met with certain acute troubles of his own.
The government at Washington had not appreciated his
economies in the matter of cheap office rental, and
it had stipulated the price which he was to pay for
public printing and various other services-prices
fixed according to Eastern standards. These prices
did not obtain in Nevada, and when Orion, confident
that because of his other economies the comptroller
would stretch a point and allow the increased frontier
tariff, he was met with the usual thick-headed official
lack of imagination, with the result that the excess
paid was deducted from his slender salary. With
a man of less conscience this condition would easily
have been offset by another wherein other rates, less
arbitrary, would have been adjusted to negotiate the
official deficit. With Orion Clemens such a remedy
was not even considered; yielding, unstable, blown
by every wind of influence though he was, Orion’s
integrity was a rock.

Governor Nye was among those who presently made this
discovery. Old politician that he was—­former
police commissioner of New York City—­Nye
took care of his own problems in the customary manner.
To him, politics was simply a game—­to be
played to win. He was a popular, jovial man,
well liked and thought of, but he did not lie awake,
as Orion did, planning economies for the government,
or how to make up excess charges out of his salary.
To him Nevada was simply a doorway to the United States
Senate, and in the mean time his brigade required official
recognition and perquisites. The governor found
Orion Clemens an impediment to this policy. Orion
could not be brought to a proper political understanding
of “special bills and accounts,” and relations
between the secretary of state and the governor were
becoming strained.

It was about this time that the man who had been potentate
of the pilot-house of a Mississippi River steamer
returned from Humboldt. He was fond of the governor,
but he had still higher regard for the family integrity.
When he had heard Orion’s troubled story, he
called on Governor Nye and delivered himself in his
own fashion. In his former employments he had
acquired a vocabulary and moral backbone sufficient
to his needs. We may regret that no stenographic
report was made of the interview. It would be
priceless now. But it is lost; we only know that
Orion’s rectitude was not again assailed, and
that curiously enough Governor Nye apparently conceived
a strong admiration and respect for his brother.

Page 111

Samuel Clemens, miner, remained but a brief time in
Carson City—­only long enough to arrange
for a new and more persistent venture. He did
not confess his Humboldt failure to his people; in
fact, he had not as yet confessed it to himself; his
avowed purpose was to return to Humboldt after a brief
investigation of the Esmeralda mines. He had been
paying heavy assessments on his holdings there; and,
with a knowledge of mining gained at Unionville, he
felt that his personal attention at Aurora might be
important. As a matter of fact, he was by this
time fairly daft on the subject of mines and mining,
with the rest of the community for company.

His earlier praises of the wonders and climate of
Tahoe had inspired his sister Pamela, always frail,
with a desire to visit that health-giving land.
Perhaps he felt that he recommended the country somewhat
too highly.

“By George, Pamela,” he said, “I
begin to fear that I have invoked a spirit of some
kind or other, which I will find more than difficult
to allay.” He proceeds to recommend California
as a residence for any or all of them, but he is clearly
doubtful concerning Nevada.

Some people are malicious enough to
think that if the devil were set at liberty and
told to confine himself to Nevada Territory, he would
come here and look sadly around awhile, and then
get homesick and go back to hell again ....
Why, I have had my whiskers and mustaches so full
of alkali dust that you’d have thought I worked
in a starch factory and boarded in a flour barrel.

But then he can no longer restrain his youth and optimism.
How could he, with a fortune so plainly in view?
It was already in his grasp in imagination; he was
on the way home with it.

I expect to return to St. Louis in July—­per
steamer. I don’t say that I will return
then, or that I shall be able to do it—­but
I expect to—­you bet. I came down
here from Humboldt, in order to look after our
Esmeralda interests. Yesterday, Bob Howland arrived
here, and I have had a talk with him. He owns
with me in the “Horatio and Derby”
ledge. He says our tunnel is in 52 feet, and a
small stream of water has been struck, which bids
fair to become a “big thing” by the
time the ledge is reached—­sufficient to
supply a mill. Now, if you knew anything
of the value of water here, you would perceive
at a glance that if the water should amount to 50 or
100 inches, we wouldn’t care whether school
kept or not. If the ledge should prove to
be worthless, we’d sell the water for money
enough to give us quite a lift. But, you see,
the ledge will not prove to be worthless.
We have located, near by, a fine site for a mill,
and when we strike the ledge, you know, we’ll
have a mill- site, water-power, and payrock, all
handy. Then we sha’n’t care whether
we have capital or not. Mill folks will build
us a mill, and wait for their pay. If nothing
goes wrong, we’ll strike the ledge in June—­and
if we do, I’ll be home in July, you know.

He pauses at this point for a paragraph of self-analysis—­characteristic
and crystal-clear.

Page 112

So, just keep your clothes on, Pamela,
until I come. Don’t you know that undemonstrated
human calculations won’t do to bet on? Don’t
you know that I have only talked, as yet, but proved
nothing? Don’t you know that I have
expended money in this country but have made none
myself? Don’t you know that I have never
held in my hands a gold or silver bar that belonged
to me? Don’t you know that it’s all
talk and no cider so far? Don’t you know
that people who always feel jolly, no matter where
they are or what happens to them—­who have
the organ of Hope preposterously developed—­who
are endowed with an unconcealable sanguine temperament—­who
never feel concerned about the price of corn—­and
who cannot, by any possibility, discover any but
the bright side of a picture—­are very apt
to go to extremes and exaggerate with 40-horse
microscopic power?

But-but

In the bright lexicon of youth,
There is no such word as Fail—­

and
I’ll prove it!

Whereupon, he lets himself go again, full-tilt:

By George, if I just had a thousand
dollars I’d be all right! Now there’s
the “Horatio,” for instance. There
are five or six shareholders in it, and I know
I could buy half of their interests at, say $20
per foot, now that flour is worth $50 per barrel and
they are pressed for money, but I am hard up myself,
and can’t buy —­and in June they’ll
strike the ledge, and then “good-by canary.”
I can’t get it for love or money. Twenty
dollars a foot! Think of it! For ground
that is proven to be rich. Twenty dollars, Madam-
and we wouldn’t part with a foot of our 75
for five times the sum. So it will be in
Humboldt next summer. The boys will get pushed
and sell ground for a song that is worth a fortune.
But I am at the helm now. I have convinced
Orion that he hasn’t business talent enough
to carry on a peanut-stand, and he has solemnly promised
me that he will meddle no more with mining or
other matters not connected with the secretary’s
office. So, you see, if mines are to be bought
or sold, or tunnels run or shafts sunk, parties have
to come to me—­and me only. I’m
the “firm,” you know.

There are pages of this, all glowing with golden expectations
and plans. Ah, well! we have all written such
letters home at one time and another-of gold-mines
of one form or another.

He closes at last with a bit of pleasantry for his
mother.

Ma says: “It looks like a
man can’t hold public office and be honest.”
Why, certainly not, Madam. A man can’t hold
public office and be honest. Lord bless you,
it is a common practice with Orion to go about
town stealing little things that happen to be lying
around loose. And I don’t remember having
heard him speak the truth since we have been in
Nevada. He even tries to prevail upon me to do
these things, Ma, but I wasn’t brought up in
that way, you know. You showed the public

Page 113

what you could do in that line when you raised me,
Madam. But then you ought to have raised me first,
so that Orion could have had the benefit of my
example. Do you know that he stole all the
stamps out of an 8-stamp quartz-mill one night, and
brought them home under his overcoat and hid them
in the back room?

XXXV

THE MINER

He had about exhausted his own funds by this time,
and it was necessary that Orion should become the
financier. The brothers owned their Esmeralda
claims in partnership, and it was agreed that Orion,
out of his modest depleted pay, should furnish the
means, while the other would go actively into the
field and develop their riches. Neither had the
slightest doubt but that they would be millionaires
presently, and both were willing to struggle and starve
for the few intervening weeks.

It was February when the printer-pilot-miner arrived
in Aurora, that rough, turbulent camp of the Esmeralda
district lying about one hundred miles south of Carson
City, on the edge of California, in the Sierra slopes.
Everything was frozen and covered with snow; but there
was no lack of excitement and prospecting and grabbing
for “feet” in this ledge and that, buried
deep under the ice and drift. The new arrival
camped with Horatio Phillips (Raish), in a tiny cabin
with a domestic roof (the ruin of it still stands),
and they cooked and bunked together and combined their
resources in a common fund. Bob Howland joined
them presently, and later an experienced miner, Calvin
H. Higbie (Cal), one day to be immortalized in the
story of ‘Roughing It’ and in the dedication
of that book. Around the cabin stove they would
gather, and paw over their specimens, or test them
with blow-pipe and “horn” spoon, after
which they would plan tunnels and figure estimates
of prospective wealth. Never mind if the food
was poor and scanty, and the chill wind came in everywhere,
and the roof leaked like a filter; they were living
in a land where all the mountains were banked with
nuggets, where all the rivers ran gold. Bob Howland
declared later that they used to go out at night and
gather up empty champagne-bottles and fruit-tins and
pile them in the rear of their cabin to convey to
others the appearance of affluence and high living.
When they lacked for other employment and were likely
to be discouraged, the ex-pilot would “ride the
bunk” and smoke and, without money and without
price, distribute riches more valuable than any they
would ever dig out of those Esmeralda Hills. At
other times he talked little or not at all, but sat
in one corner and wrote, wholly oblivious of his surroundings.
They thought he was writing letters, though letters
were not many and only to Orion during this period.
It was the old literary impulse stirring again, the
desire to set things down for their own sake, the
natural hunger for print. One or two of his earlier
letters home had found their way into a Keokuk paper

Page 114

—­the ‘Gate City’. Copies
containing them had gone back to Orion, who had shown
them to a representative of the Territorial Enterprise,
a young man named Barstow, who thought them amusing.
The Enterprise reprinted at least one of these letters,
or portions of it, and with this encouragement the
author of it sent an occasional contribution direct
to that paper over the pen-name “Josh.”
He did not care to sign his own name. He was
a miner who was soon to be a magnate; he had no desire
to be known as a camp scribbler.

He received no pay for these offerings, and expected
none. They were sketches of a broadly burlesque
sort, the robust horse-play kind of humor that belongs
to the frontier. They were not especially promising
efforts. One of them was about an old rackabones
of a horse, a sort of preliminary study for “Oahu,”
of the Sandwich Islands, or “Baalbec” and
“Jericho,” of Syria. If any one had
told him, or had told any reader of this sketch, that
the author of it was knocking at the door of the house
of fame such a person’s judgment or sincerity
would have been open to doubt. Nevertheless,
it was true, though the knock was timid and halting
and the summons to cross the threshold long delayed.

A winter mining-camp is the most bleak and comfortless
of places. The saloon and gambling-house furnished
the only real warmth and cheer. Our Aurora miners
would have been less than human, or more, if they had
not found diversion now and then in the happy harbors
of sin. Once there was a great ball given at
a newly opened pavilion, and Sam Clemens is said to
have distinguished himself by his unrestrained and
spontaneous enjoyment of the tripping harmony.
Cal Higbie, who was present, writes:

In changing partners, whenever he saw
a hand raised he would grasp it with great pleasure
and sail off into another set, oblivious to his
surroundings. Sometimes he would act as though
there was no use in trying to go right or to dance
like other people, and with his eyes closed he
would do a hoe-down or a double-shuffle all alone,
talking to himself and saying that he never dreamed
there was so much pleasure to be obtained at a
ball. It was all as natural as a child’s
play. By the second set, all the ladies were falling
over themselves to get him for a partner, and
most of the crowd, too full of mirth to dance,
were standing or sitting around, dying with laughter.

What a child he always was—­always, to the
very end? With the first break of winter the
excitement that had been fermenting and stewing around
camp stoves overflowed into the streets, washed up
the gullies, and assailed the hills. There came
then a period of madness, beside which the Humboldt
excitement had been mere intoxication. Higbie
says:

Page 115

It was amazing how wild the people became
all over the Pacific coast. In San Francisco
and other large cities barbers, hack- drivers,
servant-girls, merchants, and nearly every class of
people would club together and send agents representing
all the way from $5,000 to $500,000 or more to
buy mines. They would buy anything. in the
shape of quartz, whether it contained any mineral value
or not.

The letters which went from the Aurora miner to Orion
are humanly documentary. They are likely to be
staccato in their movement; they show nervous haste
in their composition, eagerness, and suppressed excitement;
they are not always coherent; they are seldom humorous,
except in a savage way; they are often profane; they
are likely to be violent. Even the handwriting
has a terse look; the flourish of youth has gone out
of it. Altogether they reveal the tense anxiety
of the gambling mania of which mining is the ultimate
form. An extract from a letter of April is a
fair exhibit:

Work not yet begun on the “Horatio
and Derby”—­haven’t seen it yet.
It is still in the snow. Shall begin on it
within 3 or 4 weeks —­strike the ledge
in July: Guess it is good—­worth from
$30 to $50 a foot in California....

Man named Gebhart shot here
yesterday while trying to defend a claim
on Last Chance Hill.
Expect he will die.

These mills here are not worth
a d—­n—­except Clayton’s—­and
it is
not in full working trim yet.

Send me $40 or $50—­by
mail-immediately. I go to work to-morrow
with pick and shovel.
Something’s got to come, by G—­, before
I let
go here.

By the end of April work had become active in the
mines, though the snow in places was still deep and
the ground stony with frost. On the 28th he writes:

I have been at work all day blasting
and digging, and d—­ning one of our
new claims—­“Dashaway”—­which
I don’t think a great deal of, but which
I am willing to try. We are down, now, 10 or 12
a feet. We are following down under the ledge,
but not taking it out. If we get up a windlass
to-morrow we shall take out the ledge, and see whether
it is worth anything or not.

It must have been hard work picking away at the flinty
ledges in the cold; and the “Dashaway”
would seem to have proven a disappointment, for there
is no promising mention of it again. Instead,
we hear of the “Flyaway;” and “Annipolitan”
and the “Live Yankee” and of a dozen others,
each of which holds out the beacon of hope for a little
while and then passes from notice forever. In
May it is the “Monitor” that is sure to
bring affluence, though realization is no longer regarded
as immediate.

To use a French expression,
I have “got my d—–­d satisfy”
at last.
Two years’ time will
make us capitalists, in spite of anything.

Page 116

Therefore we need fret and fume and
worry and doubt no more, but just lie still and
put up with privation for six months. Perhaps
3 months will “let us out.” Then,
if government refuses to pay the rent on your
new office we can do it ourselves. We have got
to wait six weeks, anyhow, for a dividend—­maybe
longer—­but that it will come there
is no shadow of a doubt. I have got the thing
sifted down to a dead moral certainty. I
own one-eighth of the new “Monitor Ledge,
Clemens Company,” and money can’t buy a
foot of it; because I know it to contain our fortune.
The ledge is six feet wide, and one needs no glass
to see gold and silver in it....

When you and I came out here we did
not expect ’63 or ’64 to find us rich
men—­and if that proposition had been made
we would have accepted it gladly. Now, it
is made. I am willing, now, that “Neary’s
tunnel” or anybody else’s tunnel shall
succeed. Some of them may beat us a few months,
but we shall be on hand in the fullness of time,
as sure as fate. I would hate to swap chances
with any member of the tribe . . . .

It is the same man who twenty-five years later would
fasten his faith and capital to a type-setting machine
and refuse to exchange stock in it, share for share,
with the Mergenthaler linotype. He adds:

But I have struck my tent in Esmeralda,
and I care for no mines but those which I can
superintend myself. I am a citizen here now, and
I am satisfied, although Ratio and I are “strapped”
and we haven’t three days’ rations
in the house.... I shall work the “Monitor”
and the other claims with my own hands. I
prospected 3/4 of a pound of “Monitor”
yesterday, and Raish reduced it with the blow-pipe,
and got about 10 or 12 cents in gold and silver,
besides the other half of it which we spilt on
the floor and didn’t get....

I tried to break a handsome chunk from
a huge piece of my darling “Monitor”
which we brought from the croppings yesterday, but
it all splintered up, and I send you the scraps.
I call that “choice”—­any d—–­d
fool would.

Don’t ask if it has
been assayed, for it hasn’t. It don’t
need it.
It is simply able to speak
for itself. It is six feet wide on top,
and traversed through with
veins whose color proclaims their worth.

What the devil does a man
want with any more feet when he owns in
the invincible bomb-proof
“Monitor”?

There is much more of this, and other such letters,
most of them ending with demands for money. The
living, the tools, the blasting-powder, and the help
eat it up faster than Orion’s salary can grow.

“Send me $50 or $100, all you can spare; put
away $150 subject to my call—­we shall need
it soon for the tunnel.” The letters are
full of such admonition, and Orion, more insane, if
anything, than his brother, is scraping his dollars
and pennies together to keep the mines going.
He is constantly warned to buy no claims on his own
account and promises faithfully, but cannot resist
now and then when luring baits are laid before him,
though such ventures invariably result in violent and
profane protests from Aurora.

Page 117

“The pick and shovel are the only claims I have
any confidence in now,” the miner concludes,
after one fierce outburst. “My back is sore,
and my hands are blistered with handling them to-day.”

But even the pick and shovel did not inspire confidence
a little later. He writes that the work goes
slowly, very slowly, but that they still hope to strike
it some day. “But—­if we strike
it rich—­I’ve lost my guess, that’s
all.” Then he adds: “Couldn’t
go on the hill to-day. It snowed. It always
snows here, I expect”; and the final heart-sick
line, “Don’t you suppose they have pretty
much quit writing at home?”

This is midsummer, and snow still interferes with
the work. One feels the dreary uselessness of
the quest.

Yet resolution did not wholly die, or even enthusiasm.
These things were as recurrent as new prospects, which
were plentiful enough. In a still subsequent
letter he declares that he will never look upon his
mother’s face again, or his sister’s,
or get married, or revisit the “Banner State,”
until he is a rich man, though there is less assurance
than desperation in the words.

In ‘Roughing It’ the author tells us that,
when flour had reached one dollar a pound and he could
no longer get the dollar, he abandoned mining and
went to milling “as a common laborer in a quartz-mill
at ten dollars a week.” This statement
requires modification. It was not entirely for
the money that he undertook the laborious task of washing
“riffles” and “screening tailings.”
The money was welcome enough, no doubt, but the greater
purpose was to learn refining, so that when his mines
developed he could establish his own mill and personally
superintend the work. It is like him to wish
us to believe that he was obliged to give up being
a mining magnate to become a laborer in a quartz-mill,
for there is a grim humor in the confession.
That he abandoned the milling experiment at the end
of a week is a true statement. He got a violent
cold in the damp place, and came near getting salivated,
he says in a letter, “working in the quicksilver
and chemicals. I hardly think I shall try the
experiment again. It is a confining business,
and I will not be confined for love or money.”

As recreation after this trying experience, Higbie
took him on a tour, prospecting for the traditional
“Cement Mine,” a lost claim where, in a
deposit of cement rock, gold nuggets were said to be
as thick as raisins in a fruitcake. They did
not find the mine, but they visited Mono Lake —­that
ghastly, lifeless alkali sea among the hills, which
in ’Roughing It’ he has so vividly pictured.
It was good to get away from the stress of things;
and they repeated the experiment. They made a
walking trip to Yosemite, carrying their packs, camping
and fishing in that far, tremendous isolation, which
in those days few human beings had ever visited at
all. Such trips furnished a delicious respite
from the fevered struggle around tunnel and shaft.
Amid mountain-peaks and giant forests and by tumbling
falls the quest for gold hardly seemed worth while.
More than once that summer he went alone into the wilderness
to find his balance and to get away entirely from
humankind.

Page 118

XXXVI

LAST MINING DAYS

It was late in July when he wrote:

If I do not forget it, I will send you,
per next mail, a pinch of decom. (decomposed rock)
which I pinched with thumb and finger from Wide
West ledge a while ago. Raish and I have secured
200 out of a company with 400 ft. in it, which
perhaps (the ledge, I mean) is a spur from the
W. W.—­our shaft is about 100 ft. from the
W. W. shaft. In order to get in, we agreed
to sink 30 ft. We have sublet to another
man for 50 ft., and we pay for powder and sharpening
tools.

This was the “Blind Lead” claim of Roughing
It, but the episode as set down in that book is somewhat
dramatized. It is quite true that he visited
and nursed Captain Nye while Higbie was off following
the “Cement” ‘ignus fatuus’
and that the “Wide West” holdings were
forfeited through neglect. But if the loss was
regarded as a heavy one, the letters fail to show
it. It is a matter of dispute to-day whether or
not the claim was ever of any value. A well-known
California author—­[Ella Sterling Cummins,
author of The Story of the Files, etc]—­declares:

No one need to fear that he ran any
chance of being a millionaire through the “Wide
West” mine, for the writer, as a child, played
over that historic spot and saw only a shut-down
mill and desolate hole in the ground to mark the
spot where over-hopeful men had sunk thousands
and thousands, that they never recovered.

The “Blind Lead” episode, as related,
is presumably a tale of what might have happened—­a
possibility rather than an actuality. It is vividly
true in atmosphere, however, and forms a strong and
natural climax for closing the mining episode, while
the literary privilege warrants any liberties he may
have taken for art’s sake.

In reality the close of his mining career was not
sudden and spectacular; it was a lingering close,
a reluctant and gradual surrender. The “Josh”
letters to the Enterprise had awakened at least a measure
of interest, and Orion had not failed to identify
their author when any promising occasion offered;
as a result certain tentative overtures had been made
for similar material. Orion eagerly communicated
such chances, for the money situation was becoming
a desperate one. A letter from the Aurora miner
written near the end of July presents the situation
very fully. An extract or two will be sufficient:

My debts are greater than I thought
for—­I bought $25 worth of clothing
and sent $25 to Higbie, in the cement diggings.
I owe about $45 or $50, and have got about $45
in my pocket. But how in the h—­l
I am going to live on something over $100 until October
or November is singular. The fact is, I must
have something to do, and that shortly, too....
Now write to the Sacramento Union folks, or to
Marsh, and tell them I’ll write as many letters
a week as they want for $10 a week. My board

Page 119

must be paid. Tell them I have corresponded
with the N. Orleans Crescent and other papers—­and
the Enterprise.

If they want letters from here—­who’ll
run from morning till night collecting material
cheaper? I’ll write a short letter twice
a week, for the present for the ‘Age’,
for $5 per week. Now it has been a long time
since I couldn’t make my own living, and it shall
be a long time before I loaf another year.

Nothing came of these possibilities, but about this
time Barstow, of the Enterprise, conferred with Joseph
T. Goodman, editor and owner of the paper, as to the
advisability of adding the author of the “Josh”
letters to their local staff. Joe Goodman, who
had as keen a literary perception as any man that
ever pitched a journalistic tent on the Pacific coast
(and there could be no higher praise than that), looked
over the letters and agreed with Barstow that the
man who wrote them had “something in him.”
Two of the sketches in particular he thought promising.
One of them was a burlesque report of an egotistical
lecturer who was referred to as “Professor Personal
Pronoun.” It closed by stating that it was
“impossible to print his lecture in full, as
the type-cases had run out of capital I’s.”
But it was the other sketch which settled Goodman’s
decision. It was also a burlesque report, this
time of a Fourth-of-July oration. It opened,
“I was sired by the Great American Eagle and
foaled by a continental dam.” This was
followed by a string of stock patriotic phrases absurdly
arranged. But it was the opening itself that won
Goodman’s heart.

“That is the sort of thing we want,” he
said. “Write to him, Barstow, and ask him
if he wants to come up here.”

Barstow wrote, offering twenty-five dollars a week,
a tempting sum. This was at the end of July,
1862.

In ‘Roughing It’ we are led to believe
that the author regarded this as a gift from heaven
and accepted it straightaway. As a matter of fact,
he fasted and prayed a good while over the “call.”
To Orion he wrote Barstow has offered me the post
as local reporter for the Enterprise at $25 a week,
and I have written him that I will let him know next
mail, if possible.

There was no desperate eagerness, you see, to break
into literature, even under those urgent conditions.
It meant the surrender of all hope in the mines, the
confession of another failure. On August 7th he
wrote again to Orion. He had written to Barstow,
he said, asking when they thought he might be needed.
He was playing for time to consider.

Now, I shall leave at midnight to-night, alone and
on foot, for a walk of 60 or 70 miles through a totally
uninhabited country, and it is barely possible that
mail facilities may prove infernally “slow.”
But do you write Barstow that I have left here for
a week or so, and in case he should want me, he must
write me here, or let me know through you.

Page 120

So he had gone into the wilderness to fight out his
battle alone. But eight days later, when he had
returned, there was still no decision. In a letter
to Pamela of this date he refers playfully to the discomforts
of his cabin and mentions a hope that he will spend
the winter in San Francisco; but there is no reference
in it to any newspaper prospects —­nor to
the mines, for that matter. Phillips, Howland,
and Higbie would seem to have given up by this time,
and he was camping with Dan Twing and a dog, a combination
amusingly described. It is a pleasant enough
letter, but the note of discouragement creeps in:

I did think for a while of going home
this fall—­but when I found that that
was, and had been, the cherished intention and the
darling aspiration every year of these old care-worn
Californians for twelve weary years, I felt a
little uncomfortable, so I stole a march on Disappointment
and said I would not go home this fall. This country
suits me, and it shall suit me whether or no.

He was dying hard, desperately hard; how could he
know, to paraphrase the old form of Christian comfort,
that his end as a miner would mean, in another sphere,
“a brighter resurrection” than even his
rainbow imagination could paint?

XXXVII

THE NEW ESTATE

It was the afternoon of a hot, dusty August day when
a worn, travel-stained pilgrim drifted laggingly into
the office of the Virginia City Enterprise, then in
its new building on C Street, and, loosening a heavy
roll of blankets from his shoulders, dropped wearily
into a chair. He wore a rusty slouch hat, no
coat, a faded blue flannel shirt, a Navy revolver;
his trousers were hanging on his boot tops. A
tangle of reddish-brown hair fell on his shoulders,
and a mass of tawny beard, dingy with alkali dust,
dropped half-way to his waist.

Aurora lay one hundred and thirty miles from Virginia.
He had walked that distance, carrying his heavy load.
Editor Goodman was absent at the moment, but the other
proprietor, Denis E. McCarthy, signified that the
caller might state his errand. The wanderer regarded
him with a far-away look and said, absently and with
deliberation:

“My starboard leg seems to be unshipped.
I’d like about one hundred yards of line; I
think I am falling to pieces.” Then he added:
“I want to see Mr. Barstow, or Mr. Goodman.
My name is Clemens, and I’ve come to write for
the paper.”

It was the master of the world’s widest estate
come to claim his kingdom:

William Wright, who had won a wide celebrity on the
Coast as Dan de Quille, was in the editorial chair
and took charge of the new arrival. He was going
on a trip to the States soon; it was mainly on this
account that the new man had been engaged. The
“Josh” letters were very good, in Dan’s
opinion; he gave their author a cordial welcome, and
took him around to his boarding-place. It was
the beginning of an association that continued during
Samuel Clemens’s stay in Virginia City and of
a friendship that lasted many years.

Page 121

The Territorial Enterprise was one of the most remarkable
frontier papers ever published. Its editor-in-chief,
Joseph Goodman, was a man with rare appreciation,
wide human understanding, and a comprehensive newspaper
policy. Being a young man, he had no policy, in
fact, beyond the general purpose that his paper should
be a forum for absolutely free speech, provided any
serious statement it contained was based upon knowledge.
His instructions to the new reporter were about as
follows:

“Never say we learn so and so, or it is rumored,
or we understand so and so; but go to headquarters
and get the absolute facts; then speak out and say
it is so and so. In the one case you are likely
to be shot, and in the other you are pretty certain
to be; but you will preserve the public confidence.”

Goodman was not new to the West. He had come
to California as a boy and had been a miner, explorer,
printer, and contributor by turns. Early in ’61,
when the Comstock Lode—­[Named for its discoverer,
Henry T. P. Comstock, a half-crazy miner, who realized
very little from his stupendous find.]—­was
new and Virginia in the first flush of its monster
boom, he and Denis McCarthy had scraped together a
few dollars and bought the paper. It had been
a hand-to-hand struggle for a while, but in a brief
two years, from a starving sheet in a shanty the Enterprise,
with new building, new presses, and a corps of swift
compositors brought up from San Francisco, had become
altogether metropolitan, as well as the most widely
considered paper on the Coast. It had been borne
upward by the Comstock tide, though its fearless,
picturesque utterance would have given it distinction
anywhere. Goodman himself was a fine, forceful
writer, and Dan de Quille and R. M. Daggett (afterward
United States minister to Hawaii) were representative
of Enterprise men.—­[The Comstock of that
day became famous for its journalism. Associated
with the Virginia papers then or soon afterward were
such men as Tom Fitch (the silver-tongued orator),
Alf Doten, W. J. Forbes, C. C. Goodwin, H. R. Mighels,
Clement T. Rice, Arthur McEwen, and Sam Davis—­a
great array indeed for a new Territory.]—­Samuel
Clemens fitted precisely into this group. He
added the fresh, rugged vigor of thought and expression
that was the very essence of the Comstock, which was
like every other frontier mining-camp, only on a more
lavish, more overwhelming scale.

There was no uncertainty about the Comstock; the silver
and gold were there. Flanking the foot of Mount
Davidson, the towns of Gold Hill and Virginia and
the long street between were fairly underburrowed and
underpinned by the gigantic mining construction of
that opulent lode whose treasures were actually glutting
the mineral markets of the world. The streets
overhead seethed and swarmed with miners, mine owners,
and adventurers—­riotous, rollicking children
of fortune, always ready to drink and make merry,
as eager in their pursuit of pleasure as of gold.
Comstockers would always laugh at a joke; the rougher
the better. The town of Virginia itself was just
a huge joke to most of them. Everybody had, money;
everybody wanted to laugh and have a good time.
The Enterprise, “Comstock to the backbone,”
did what it could to help things along.

Page 122

It was a sort of free ring, with every one for himself.
Goodman let the boys write and print in accordance
with their own ideas and upon any subject. Often
they wrote of each other—­squibs and burlesques,
which gratified the Comstock far more than mere news.—­[The
indifference to ‘news’ was noble—­none
the less so because it was so blissfully unconscious.
Editors Mark or Dan would dismiss a murder with a couple
of inches and sit down and fill up a column with a
fancy sketch: “Arthur McEwen"]—­It
was the proper class-room for Mark Twain, an encouraging
audience and free utterance: fortune could have
devised nothing better for him than that.

He was peculiarly fitted for the position. Unspoiled
humanity appealed to him, and the Comstock presented
human nature in its earliest landscape forms.
Furthermore, the Comstock was essentially optimistic—­so
was he; any hole in the ground to him held a possible,
even a probable, fortune.

His pilot memory became a valuable asset in news-gathering.
Remembering marks, banks, sounding, and other river
detail belonged apparently in the same category of
attainments as remembering items and localities of
news. He could travel all day without a note-book
and at night reproduce the day’s budget or at
least the picturesqueness of it, without error.
He was presently accounted a good reporter, except
where statistics —­measurements and figures—­were
concerned. These he gave “a lick and a
promise,” according to De Quille, who wrote afterward
of their associations. De Quille says further:

Mark and I agreed well in our work,
which we divided when there was a rush of events;
but we often cruised in company, he taking the items
of news he could handle best, and I such as I felt
competent to work up. However, we wrote at
the same table and frequently helped each other
with such suggestions as occurred to us during the
brief consultations we held in regard to the handling
of any matters of importance. Never was there
an angry word between us in all the time we worked
together.

De Quille tells how Clemens clipped items with a knife
when there were no scissors handy, and slashed through
on the top of his desk, which in time took on the
semblance “of a huge polar star, spiritedly dashing
forth a thousand rays.”

The author of ‘Roughing It’ has given
us a better picture of the Virginia City of those
days and his work there than any one else will ever
write. He has made us feel the general spirit
of affluence that prevailed; how the problem was not
to get money, but to spend it; how “feet”
in any one of a hundred mines could be had for the
asking; how such shares were offered like apples or
cigars or bonbons, as a natural matter of courtesy
when one happened to have his supply in view; how any
one connected with a newspaper would have stocks thrust
upon him, and how in a brief time he had acquired
a trunk ful of such riches and usually had something
to sell when any of the claims made a stir on the
market. He has told us of the desperadoes and
their trifling regard for human life, and preserved
other elemental characters of these prodigal days.
The funeral of Buck Fanshaw that amazing masterpiece—­is
a complete epitome of the social frontier.

Page 123

It would not be the part of wisdom to attempt another
inclusive presentation of Comstock conditions.
We may only hope to add a few details of history,
justified now by time and circumstances, to supplement
the picture with certain data of personality preserved
from the drift of years.

XXXVIII

Oneofthe “Staff”

The new reporter found acquaintance easy. The
office force was like one family among which there
was no line of caste. Proprietors, editors, and
printers were social equals; there was little ceremony
among them—­none at all outside of the office.—­["The
paper went to press at two in the morning, then all
the staff and all the compositors gathered themselves
together in the composing-room and drank beer and sang
the popular war-songs of the day until dawn.”—­S.
L. C., in 1908.]—­Samuel Clemens immediately
became “Sam,” or “Josh,” to
his associates, just as De Quille was “Dan”
and Goodman “Joe.” He found that he
disliked the name of Josh, and, as he did not sign
it again, it was presently dropped. The office,
and Virginia City generally, quickly grew fond of him,
delighting in his originality and measured speech.
Enterprise readers began to identify his work, then
unsigned, and to enjoy its fresh phrasing, even when
it was only the usual local item or mining notice.
True to its name and reputation, the paper had added
a new attraction.

It was only a brief time after his arrival in Virginia
City that Clemens began the series of hoaxes which
would carry his reputation, not always in an enviable
fashion, across the Sierras and down the Pacific coast.
With one exception these are lost to-day, for so far
as known there is not a single file of the Enterprise
in existence. Only a few stray copies and clippings
are preserved, but we know the story of some of these
literary pranks and of their results. They were
usually intended as a special punishment of some particular
individual or paper or locality; but victims were
gathered by the wholesale in their seductive web.
Mark Twain himself, in his book of Sketches, has set
down something concerning the first of these, “The
Petrified Man,” and of another, “My Bloody
Massacre,” but in neither case has he told it
all. “The Petrified Man” hoax was
directed at an official named Sewall, a coroner and
justice of the peace at Humboldt, who had been pompously
indifferent in the matter of supplying news.
The story, told with great circumstance and apparent
care as to detail, related the finding of a petrified
prehistoric man, partially imbedded in a rock, in a
cave in the desert more than one hundred miles from
Humboldt, and how Sewall had made the perilous five-day
journey in the alkali waste to hold an inquest over
a man that had been dead three hundred years; also
how, “with that delicacy so characteristic of
him,” Sewall had forbidden the miners from blasting
him from his position. The account further stated

Page 124

that the hands of the deceased were arranged in a
peculiar fashion; and the description of the arrangement
was so skilfully woven in with other matters that at
first, or even second, reading one might not see that
the position indicated was the ancient one which begins
with the thumb at the nose and in many ages has been
used impolitely to express ridicule and the word “sold.”
But the description was a shade too ingenious.
The author expected that the exchanges would see the
jolt and perhaps assist in the fun he would have with
Sewall. He did not contemplate a joke on the papers
themselves. As a matter of fact, no one saw the
“sell” and most of the papers printed
his story of the petrified man as a genuine discovery.
This was a surprise, and a momentary disappointment;
then he realized that he had builded better than he
knew. He gathered up a bundle of the exchanges
and sent them to Sewall; also he sent marked copies
to scientific men in various parts of the United States.
The papers had taken it seriously; perhaps the scientists
would. Some of them did, and Sewall’s days
became unhappy because of letters received asking
further information. As literature, the effort
did not rank high, and as a trick on an obscure official
it was hardly worth while; but, as a joke on the Coast
exchanges and press generally, it was greatly regarded
and its author, though as yet unnamed, acquired prestige.

Inquiries began to be made as to who was the smart
chap in Virginia that did these things. The papers
became wary and read Enterprise items twice before
clipping them. Clemens turned his attention to
other matters to lull suspicion. The great “Dutch
Nick Massacre” did not follow until a year later.

Reference has already been made to the Comstock’s
delight in humor of a positive sort. The practical
joke was legal tender in Virginia. One might
protest and swear, but he must take it. An example
of Comstock humor, regarded as the finest assay, is
an incident still told of Leslie Blackburn and Pat
Holland, two gay men about town. They were coming
down C Street one morning when they saw some fine
watermelons on a fruit-stand at the International
Hotel corner. Watermelons were rare and costly
in that day and locality, and these were worth three
dollars apiece. Blackburn said:

“Pat, let’s get one of those watermelons.
You engage that fellow in conversation while I stand
at the corner, where I can step around out of sight
easily. When you have got him interested, point
to something on the back shelf and pitch me a melon.”

This appealed to Holland, and he carried out his part
of the plan perfectly; but when he pitched the watermelon
Blackburn simply put his hands in his pockets, and
stepped around the corner, leaving the melon a fearful
disaster on the pavement. It was almost impossible
for Pat to explain to the fruit-man why he pitched
away a three-dollar melon like that even after paying
for it, and it was still more trying, also more expensive,
to explain to the boys facing the various bars along
C Street.

Page 125

Sam Clemens, himself a practical joker in his youth,
found a healthy delight in this knock-down humor of
the Comstock. It appealed to his vigorous, elemental
nature. He seldom indulged physically in such
things; but his printed squibs and hoaxes and his keen
love of the ridiculous placed him in the joker class,
while his prompt temper, droll manner, and rare gift
of invective made him an enticing victim.

Among the Enterprise compositors was one by the name
of Stephen E. Gillis (Steve, of course—­one
of the “fighting Gillises"), a small, fearless
young fellow, handsome, quick of wit, with eyes like
needle-points.

“Steve weighed only ninety-five pounds,”
Mark Twain once wrote of him, “but it was well
known throughout the Territory that with his fists
he could whip anybody that walked on two legs, let
his weight and science be what they might.”

Clemens was fond of Steve Gillis from the first.
The two became closely associated in time, and were
always bosom friends; but Steve was a merciless joker,
and never as long as they were together could he “resist
the temptation of making Sam swear,” claiming
that his profanity was grander than any music.

A word hereabout Mark Twain’s profanity.
Born with a matchless gift of phrase, the printing-office,
the river, and the mines had developed it in a rare
perfection. To hear him denounce a thing was to
give one the fierce, searching delight of galvanic
waves. Every characterization seemed the most
perfect fit possible until he applied the next.
And somehow his profanity was seldom an offense.
It was not mere idle swearing; it seemed always genuine
and serious. His selection of epithet was always
dignified and stately, from whatever source—­and
it might be from the Bible or the gutter. Some
one has defined dirt as misplaced matter. It
is perhaps the greatest definition ever uttered.
It is absolutely universal in its application, and
it recurs now, remembering Mark Twain’s profanity.
For it was rarely misplaced; hence it did not often
offend. It seemed, in fact, the safety-valve of
his high-pressure intellectual engine. When he
had blown off he was always calm, gentle; forgiving,
and even tender. Once following an outburst he
said, placidly:

It seems proper to add that it is not the purpose
of this work to magnify or modify or excuse that extreme
example of humankind which forms its chief subject;
but to set him down as he was inadequately, of course,
but with good conscience and clear intent.

Page 126

Led by Steve Gillis, the Enterprise force used to
devise tricks to set him going. One of these
was to hide articles from his desk. He detested
the work necessary to the care of a lamp, and wrote
by the light of a candle. To hide “Sam’s
candle” was a sure way to get prompt and vigorous
return. He would look for it a little; then he
would begin a slow, circular walk—­a habit
acquired in the limitations of the pilot-house —­and
his denunciation of the thieves was like a great orchestration
of wrong. By and by the office boy, supposedly
innocent, would find another for him, and all would
be forgotten. He made a placard, labeled with
fearful threats and anathemas, warning any one against
touching his candle; but one night both the placard
and the candle were gone.

Now, amoung his Virginia acquaintances was a young
minister, a Mr. Rising, “the fragile, gentle
new fledgling” of the Buck Fanshaw episode.
Clemens greatly admired Mr. Rising’s evident
sincerity, and the young minister had quickly recognized
the new reporter’s superiority of mind.
Now and then he came to the office to call on him.
Unfortunately, he happened to step in just at that
moment when, infuriated by the latest theft of his
property, Samuel Clemens was engaged in his rotary
denunciation of the criminals, oblivious of every other
circumstance. Mr. Rising stood spellbound by
this, to him, new phase of genius, and at last his
friend became dimly aware of him. He did not halt
in his scathing treadmill and continued in the slow
monotone of speech:

“I know, Mr. Rising, I know it’s wicked
to talk like this; I know it is wrong. I know
I shall certainly go to hell for it. But if you
had a candle, Mr. Rising, and those thieves should
carry it off every night, I know that you would say,
just as I say, Mr. Rising, G-d d—­n their
impenitent souls, may they roast in hell for a million
years.”

The little clergyman caught his breath.

“Maybe I should, Mr. Clemens,” he replied,
“but I should try to say, ‘Forgive them,
Father, they know not what they do.’”

“Oh, well! if you put it on the ground that
they are just fools, that alters the case, as I am
one of that class myself. Come in and we’ll
try to forgive them and forget about it.”

Mark Twain had a good many experiences with young
ministers. He was always fond of them, and they
often sought him out. Once, long afterward, at
a hotel, he wanted a boy to polish his shoes, and had
rung a number of times without getting any response.
Presently, he thought he heard somebody approaching
in the hall outside. He flung open the door,
and a small, youngish-looking person, who seemed to
have been hesitating at the door, made a movement
as though to depart hastily. Clemens grabbed
him by the collar.

“Look here,” he said, “I’ve
been waiting and ringing here for half an hour.
Now I want you to take those shoes, and polish them,
quick. Do you hear?”

The slim, youthful person trembled a good deal, and
said: “I would, Mr. Clemens, I would indeed,
sir, if I could. But I’m a minister of the
Gospel, and I’m not prepared for such work.”

Page 127

XXXIX

PHILOSOPHY AND POETRY

There was a side to Samuel Clemens that in those days
few of his associates saw. This was the poetic,
the philosophic, the contemplative side. Joseph
Goodman recognized this phase of his character, and,
while he perhaps did not regard it as a future literary
asset, he delighted in it, and in their hours of quiet
association together encouraged its exhibition.
It is rather curious that with all his literary penetration
Goodman did not dream of a future celebrity for Clemens.
He afterward said:

“If I had been asked to prophesy which of the
two men, Dan de Quille or Sam, would become distinguished,
I should have said De Quille. Dan was talented,
industrious, and, for that time and place, brilliant.
Of course, I recognized the unusualness of Sam’s
gifts, but he was eccentric and seemed to lack industry;
it is not likely that I should have prophesied fame
for him then.”

Goodman, like MacFarlane in Cincinnati, half a dozen
years before, though by a different method, discovered
and developed the deeper vein. Often the two,
dining together in a French restaurant, discussed life,
subtler philosophies, recalled various phases of human
history, remembered and recited the poems that gave
them especial enjoyment. “The Burial of
Moses,” with its noble phrasing and majestic
imagery, appealed strongly to Clemens, and he recited
it with great power. The first stanza in particular
always stirred him, and it stirred his hearer as well.
With eyes half closed and chin lifted, a lighted cigar
between his fingers, he would lose himself in the
music of the stately lines.

By Nebo’s
lonely mountain,
On this
side Jordan’s wave,
In a vale
in the land of Moab,
There lies
a lonely grave.

And no man
knows that sepulchre,
And no man
saw it e’er,
For the
angels of God, upturned the sod,
And laid
the dead man there.

Another stanza that he cared for almost as much was
the one beginning:

And had
he not high honor
—­The
hill-side for a pall,
To lie in
state while angels wait
With stars
for tapers tall,
And the
dark rock-pines, like tossing plumes,
Over his
bier to wave,
And God’s
own hand in that lonely land,
To lay him
in the grave?

Without doubt he was moved to emulate the simple grandeur
of that poem, for he often repeated it in those days,
and somewhat later we find it copied into his notebook
in full. It would seem to have become to him a
sort of literary touchstone; and in some measure it
may be regarded as accountable for the fact that in
the fullness of time “he made use of the purest
English of any modern writer.” These are
Goodman’s words, though William Dean Howells
has said them, also, in substance, and Brander Matthews,
and many others who know about such things. Goodman
adds, “The simplicity and beauty of his style
are almost without a parallel, except in the common
version of the Bible,” which is also true.
One is reminded of what Macaulay said of Milton:

Page 128

“There would seem at first sight to be no more
in his words than in other words. But they are
words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced
than the past is present and the distance near.
New forms of beauty start at once into existence,
and all the burial-places of the memory give up their
dead.”

One drifts ahead, remembering these things. The
triumph of words, the mastery of phrases, lay all
before him at the time of which we are writing now.
He was twenty-seven. At that age Rudyard Kipling
had reached his meridian. Samuel Clemens was
still in the classroom. Everything came as a
lesson-phrase, form, aspect, and combination; nothing
escaped unvalued. The poetic phase of things particularly
impressed him. Once at a dinner with Goodman,
when the lamp-light from the chandelier struck down
through the claret on the tablecloth in a great red
stain, he pointed to it dramatically “Look, Joe,”
he said, “the angry tint of wine.”

It was at one of these private sessions, late in ’62,
that Clemens proposed to report the coming meeting
of the Carson legislature. He knew nothing of
such work and had small knowledge of parliamentary
proceedings. Formerly it had been done by a man
named Gillespie, but Gillespie was now clerk of the
house. Goodman hesitated; then, remembering that
whether Clemens got the reports right or not, he would
at least make them readable, agreed to let him undertake
the work.

XL

“Marktwain”

The early Nevada legislature was an interesting assembly.
All State legislatures are that, and this was a mining
frontier. No attempt can be made to describe
it. It was chiefly distinguished for a large ignorance
of procedure, a wide latitude of speech, a noble appreciation
of humor, and plenty of brains. How fortunate
Mask Twain was in his schooling, to be kept away from
institutional training, to be placed in one after
another of those universities of life where the sole
curriculum is the study of the native inclinations
and activities of mankind! Sometimes, in after-years,
he used to regret the lack of systematic training.
Well for him—­and for us—­that
he escaped that blight.

For the study of human nature the Nevada assembly
was a veritable lecture-room. In it his understanding,
his wit, his phrasing, his self-assuredness grew like
Jack’s bean-stalk, which in time was ready to
break through into a land above the sky. He made
some curious blunders in his reports, in the beginning;
but he was so frank in his ignorance and in his confession
of it that the very unsophistication of his early
letters became their chief charm. Gillespie coached
him on parliamentary matters, and in time the reports
became technically as well as artistically good.
Clemens in return christened Gillespie “Young,
Jefferson’s Manual,” a title which he bore,
rather proudly indeed, for many years.

Another “entitlement” growing out of those
early reports, and possibly less satisfactory to its
owner, was the one accorded to Clement T. Rice, of
the Virginia City Union. Rice knew the legislative
work perfectly and concluded to poke fun at the Enterprise
letters.

Page 129

But this was a mistake. Clemens in his next letter
declared that Rice’s reports might be parliamentary
enough, but that they covered with glittering technicalities
the most festering mass of misstatement, and even
crime. He avowed that they were wholly untrustworthy;
dubbed the author of them “The Unreliable,”
and in future letters never referred to him by any
other term. Carson and the Comstock and the papers
of the Coast delighted in this burlesque journalistic
warfare, and Rice was “The Unreliable”
for life.

Rice and Clemens, it should be said, though rivals,
were the best of friends, and there was never any
real animosity between them.

Clemens quickly became a favorite with the members;
his sharp letters, with their amusing turn of phrase
and their sincerity, won general friendship.
Jack Simmons, speaker of the house, and Billy Clagget,
the Humboldt delegation, were his special cronies
and kept him on the inside of the political machine.
Clagget had remained in Unionville after the mining
venture, warned his Keokuk sweetheart, and settled
down into politics and law. In due time he would
become a leading light and go to Congress. He
was already a notable figure of forceful eloquence
and tousled, unkempt hair. Simmons, Clagget,
and Clemens were easily the three conspicuous figures
of the session.

It must have been gratifying to the former prospector
and miner to come back to Carson City a person of
consequence, where less than a year before he had
been regarded as no more than an amusing indolent fellow,
a figure to smile at, but unimportant. There
is a photograph extant of Clemens and his friends
Clagget and Simmons in a group, and we gather from
it that he now arrayed himself in a long broadcloth
cloak, a starched shirt, and polished boots.
Once more he had become the glass of fashion that
he had been on the river. He made his residence
with Orion, whose wife and little daughter Jennie
had by this time come out from the States. “Sister
Mollie,” as wife of the acting governor, was
presently social leader of the little capital; her
brilliant brother-in-law its chief ornament.
His merriment and songs and good nature made him a
favorite guest. His lines had fallen in pleasant
places; he could afford to smile at the hard Esmeralda
days.

He was not altogether satisfied. His letters,
copied and quoted all along the Coast, were unsigned.
They were easily identified with one another, but
not with a personality. He realized that to build
a reputation it was necessary to fasten it to an individuality,
a name.

He gave the matter a good deal of thought. He
did not consider the use of his own name; the ‘nom
de plume’ was the fashion of the time. He
wanted something brief, crisp, definite, unforgettable.
He tried over a good many combinations in his mind,
but none seemed convincing. Just then—­this
was early in 1863—­news came to him that
the old pilot he had wounded by his satire, Isaiah
Sellers, was dead. At once the pen-name of Captain
Sellers recurred to him. That was it; that was
the sort of name he wanted. It was not trivial;
it had all the qualities—­Sellers would
never need it again. Clemens decided he would
give it a new meaning and new association in this
far-away land. He went up to Virginia City.

Page 130

“Joe,” he said, to Goodman, “I want
to sign my articles. I want to be identified
to a wider audience.”

“All right, Sam. What name do you want
to use ’Josh’?”

“No, I want to sign them ‘Mark Twain.’
It is an old river term, a leads-man’s call,
signifying two fathoms—­twelve feet.
It has a richness about it; it was always a pleasant
sound for a pilot to hear on a dark night; it meant
safe water.”

He did not then mention that Captain Isaiah Sellers
had used and dropped the name. He was ashamed
of his part in that episode, and the offense was still
too recent for confession. Goodman considered
a moment:

“Very well, Sam,” he said, “that
sounds like a good name.”

It was indeed a good name. In all the nomenclature
of the world no more forceful combination of words
could have been selected to express the man for whom
they stood. The name Mark Twain is as infinite,
as fundamental as that of John Smith, without the
latter’s wasting distribution of strength.
If all the prestige in the name of John Smith were
combined in a single individual, its dynamic energy
might give it the carrying power of Mark Twain.
Let this be as it may, it has proven the greatest ’nom
de plume’ ever chosen—­a name exactly
in accord with the man, his work, and his career.

It is not surprising that Goodman did not recognize
this at the moment. We should not guess the force
that lies in a twelve-inch shell if we had never seen
one before or heard of its seismic destruction.
We should have to wait and see it fired, and take
account of the result.

It was first signed to a Carson letter bearing date
of February 2, 1863, and from that time was attached
to all Samuel Clemens’s work. The work
was neither better nor worse than before, but it had
suddenly acquired identification and special interest.
Members of the legislature and friends in Virginia
and Carson immediately began to address him as “Mark.”
The papers of the Coast took it up, and within a period
to be measured by weeks he was no longer “Sam”
or “Clemens” or “that bright chap
on the Enterprise,” but “Mark”—­“Mark
Twain.” No ‘nom de plume’ was
ever so quickly and generally accepted as that.
De Quille, returning from the East after an absence
of several months, found his room and deskmate with
the distinction of a new name and fame.

It is curious that in the letters to the home folks
preserved from that period there is no mention of
his new title and its success. In fact, the writer
rarely speaks of his work at all, and is more inclined
to tell of the mining shares he has accumulated, their
present and prospective values. However, many
of the letters are undoubtedly missing. Such as
have been preserved are rather airy epistles full of
his abounding joy of life and good nature. Also
they bear evidence of the renewal of his old river
habit of sending money home—­twenty dollars
in each letter, with intervals of a week or so between.

Page 131

XLI

THE CREAM OF COMSTOCK HUMOR

With the adjournment of the legislature, Samuel Clemens
returned to Virginia City distinctly a notability—­Mark
Twain. He was regarded as leading man on the
Enterprise—­which in itself was high distinction
on the Comstock—­while his improved dress
and increased prosperity commanded additional respect.
When visitors of note came along—­well-known
actors, lecturers, politicians—­he was introduced
as one of the Comstock features which it was proper
to see, along with the Ophir and Gould and Curry mines,
and the new hundred-stamp quartz-mill.

He was rather grieved and hurt, therefore, when, after
several collections had been taken up in the Enterprise
office to present various members of the staff with
meerschaum pipes, none had come to him. He mentioned
this apparent slight to Steve Gillis:

Unhappy day! To that remorseless creature, Steve
Gillis, this was a golden opportunity for deviltry
of a kind that delighted his soul. This is the
story, precisely as Gillis himself told it to the writer
of these annals more than a generation later:

“There was a German kept a cigar store in Virginia
City and always had a fine assortment of meerschaum
pipes. These pipes usually cost anywhere from
forty to seventy-five dollars.

“One day Denis McCarthy and I were walking by
the old German’s place, and stopped to look
in at the display in the window. Among other things
there was one large imitation meerschaum with a high
bowl and a long stem, marked a dollar and a half.

“I decided that that would be just the pipe
for Sam. We went in and bought it, also a very
much longer stem. I think the stem alone cost
three dollars. Then we had a little German-silver
plate engraved with Mark’s name on it and by
whom presented, and made preparations for the presentation.
Charlie Pope—­[afterward proprietor of Pope’s
Theater, St. Louis]—­was playing at the
Opera House at the time, and we engaged him to make
the presentation speech.

“Then we let in Dan de Quille, Mark’s
closest friend, to act the part of Judas—­to
tell Mark privately that he, was going to be presented
with a fine pipe, so that he could have a speech prepared
in reply to Pope’s. It was awful low-down
in Dan. We arranged to have the affair come off
in the saloon beneath the Opera House after the play
was over.

“Everything went off handsomely; but it was
a pretty remorseful occasion, and some of us had a
hang-dog look; for Sam took it in such sincerity,
and had prepared one of the most beautiful speeches
I ever heard him make. Pope’s presentation,
too, was beautifully done. He told Sam how his
friends all loved him, and that this pipe, purchased
at so great an expense, was but a small token of their
affection. But Sam’s reply, which was supposed
to be impromptu, actually brought the tears to the
eyes of some of us, and he was interrupted every other
minute with applause. I never felt so sorry for
anybody.

Page 132

“Still, we were bent on seeing the thing through.
After Sam’s speech was finished, he ordered
expensive wines—­champagne and sparkling
Moselle. Then we went out to do the town, and
kept things going until morning to drown our sorrow.

“Well, next day, of course, he started in to
color the pipe. It wouldn’t color any more
than a piece of chalk, which was about all it was.
Sam would smoke and smoke, and complain that it didn’t
seem to taste right, and that it wouldn’t color.
Finally Denis said to him one day:

“’Oh, Sam, don’t you know that’s
just a damned old egg-shell, and that the boys bought
it for a dollar and a half and presented you with it
for a joke?’

“Then Sam was furious, and we laid the whole
thing on Dan de Quille. He had a thunder-cloud
on his face when he started up for the Local Room,
where Dan was. He went in and closed the door
behind him, and locked it, and put the key in his
pocket—­an awful sign. Dan was there
alone, writing at his table.

“Sam said, ’Dan, did you know, when you
invited me to make that speech, that those fellows
were going to give me a bogus pipe?’

“There was no way for Dan to escape, and he
confessed. Sam walked up and down the floor,
as if trying to decide which way to slay Dan.
Finally he said:

“’Oh, Dan, to think that you, my dearest
friend, who knew how little money I had, and how hard
I would work to prepare a speech that would show my
gratitude to my friends, should be the traitor, the
Judas, to betray me with a kiss! Dan, I never
want to look on your face again. You knew I would
spend every dollar I had on those pirates when I couldn’t
afford to spend anything; and yet you let me do it;
you aided and abetted their diabolical plan, and you
even got me to get up that damned speech to make the
thing still more ridiculous.’

“Of course Dan felt terribly, and tried to defend
himself by saying that they were really going to present
him with a fine pipe—­a genuine one, this
time. But Sam at first refused to be comforted;
and when, a few days later, I went in with the pipe
and said, ’Sam, here’s the pipe the boys
meant to give you all the time,’ and tried to
apologize, he looked around a little coldly, and said:

“‘Is that another of those bogus old pipes?’

“He accepted it, though, and general peace was
restored. One day, soon after, he said to me:

“’Steve, do you know that I think that
that bogus pipe smokes about as well as the good one?’”

Many years later (this was in his home at Hartford,
and Joe Goodman was present) Mark Twain one day came
upon the old imitation pipe.

“Joe,” he said, “that was a cruel,
cruel trick the boys played on me; but, for the feeling
I had during the moment when they presented me with
that pipe and when Charlie Pope was making his speech
and I was making my reply to it—­for the
memory of that feeling, now, that pipe is more precious
to me than any pipe in the world!”

Page 133

Eighteen hundred and sixty-three was flood-tide on
the Comstock. Every mine was working full blast.
Every mill was roaring and crunching, turning out
streams of silver and gold. A little while ago
an old resident wrote:

When I close my eyes I hear again the
respirations of hoisting- engines and the roar
of stamps; I can see the “camels” after
midnight packing in salt; I can see again the jam
of teams on C Street and hear the anathemas of
the drivers—­all the mighty work that
went on in order to lure the treasures from the deep
chambers of the great lode and to bring enlightenment
to the desert.

Those were lively times. In the midst of one
of his letters home Mark Twain interrupts himself
to say: “I have just heard five pistol-shots
down the street—­as such things are in my
line, I will go and see about it,” and in a
postscript added a few hours later:

5 A.M. The pistol-shot did its
work well. One man, a Jackson County Missourian,
shot two of my friends (police officers) through the
heart—­both died within three minutes.
The murderer’s name is John Campbell.

“Mark and I had our hands full,” says
De Quille, “and no grass grew under our feet.”
In answer to some stray criticism of their policy,
they printed a sort of editorial manifesto:

Our duty is to keep the universe thoroughly
posted concerning murders and street fights, and
balls, and theaters, and pack-trains, and churches,
and lectures, and school-houses, and city military
affairs, and highway robberies, and Bible societies,
and hay-wagons, and the thousand other things
which it is in the province of local reporters
to keep track of and magnify into undue importance
for the instruction of the readers of a great
daily newspaper.

It is easy to recognize Mark Twain’s hand in
that compendium of labor, which, in spite of its amusing
apposition, was literally true, and so intended, probably
with no special thought of humor in its construction.
It may be said, as well here as anywhere, that it was
not Mark Twain’s habit to strive for humor.
He saw facts at curious angles and phrased them accordingly.
In Virginia City he mingled with the turmoil of the
Comstock and set down what he saw and thought, in his
native speech. The Comstock, ready to laugh,
found delight in his expression and discovered a vast
humor in his most earnest statements.

On the other hand, there were times when the humor
was intended and missed its purpose. We have
already recalled the instance of the “Petrified
Man” hoax, which was taken seriously; but the
“Empire City Massacre” burlesque found
an acceptance that even its author considered serious
for a time. It is remembered to-day in Virginia
City as the chief incident of Mark Twain’s Comstock
career.

Page 134

This literary bomb really had two objects, one of
which was to punish the San Francisco Bulletin for
its persistent attacks on Washoe interests; the other,
though this was merely incidental, to direct an unpleasant
attention to a certain Carson saloon, the Magnolia,
which was supposed to dispense whisky of the “forty
rod” brand—­that is, a liquor warranted
to kill at that range. It was the Bulletin that
was to be made especially. ridiculous. This paper
had been particularly disagreeable concerning the
“dividend-cooking” system of certain of
the Comstock mines, at the same time calling invidious
attention to safer investments in California stocks.
Samuel Clemens, with “half a trunkful”
of Comstock shares, had cultivated a distaste for
California things in general: In a letter of
that time he says:

“How I hate everything that looks or tastes
or smells like California!” With his customary
fickleness of soul, he was glorifying California less
than a year later, but for the moment he could see
no good in that Nazareth. To his great satisfaction,
one of the leading California corporations, the Spring
Valley Water Company, “cooked” a dividend
of its own about this time, resulting in disaster
to a number of guileless investors who were on the
wrong side of the subsequent crash. This afforded
an inviting opportunity for reprisal. With Goodman’s
consent he planned for the California papers, and
the Bulletin in particular, a punishment which he
determined to make sufficiently severe. He believed
the papers of that State had forgotten his earlier
offenses, and the result would show he was not mistaken.

There was a point on the Carson River, four miles
from Carson City, known as “Dutch Nick’s,”
and also as Empire City, the two being identical.
There was no forest there of any sort nothing but sage-brush.
In the one cabin there lived a bachelor with no household.
Everybody in Virginia and Carson, of course, knew
these things.

Mark Twain now prepared a most lurid and graphic account
of how one Phillip Hopkins, living “just at
the edge of the great pine forest which lies between
Empire City and ’Dutch Nick’s’,”
had suddenly gone insane and murderously assaulted
his entire family consisting of his wife and their
nine children, ranging in ages from one to nineteen
years. The wife had been slain outright, also
seven of the children; the other two might recover.
The murder had been committed in the most brutal and
ghastly fashion, after which Hopkins had scalped his
wife, leaped on a horse, cut his own throat from ear
to ear, and ridden four miles into Carson City, dropping
dead at last in front of the Magnolia saloon, the
red-haired scalp of his wife still clutched in his
gory hand. The article further stated that the
cause of Mr. Hopkins’s insanity was pecuniary
loss, he having withdrawn his savings from safe Comstock
investments and, through the advice of a relative,
one of the editors of the San Francisco Bulletin,
invested them in the Spring Valley Water Company.
This absurd tale with startling head-lines appeared
in the Enterprise, in its issue of October 28, 1863.

Page 135

It was not expected that any one in Virginia City
or Carson City would for a moment take any stock in
the wild invention, yet so graphic was it that nine
out of ten on first reading never stopped to consider
the entire impossibility of the locality and circumstance.
Even when these things were pointed out many readers
at first refused to confess themselves sold.
As for the Bulletin and other California papers, they
were taken-in completely, and were furious. Many
of them wrote and demanded the immediate discharge
of its author, announcing that they would never copy
another line from the Enterprise, or exchange with
it, or have further relations with a paper that had
Mark Twain on its staff. Citizens were mad, too,
and cut off their subscriptions. The joker was
in despair.

“Oh, Joe,” he said, “I have ruined
your business, and the only reparation I can make
is to resign. You can never recover from this
blow while I am on the paper.”

“Nonsense,” replied Goodman. “We
can furnish the people with news, but we can’t
supply them with sense. Only time can do that.
The flurry will pass. You just go ahead.
We’ll win out in the long run.”

But the offender was in torture; he could not sleep.
“Dan, Dan,” he said, “I am being
burned alive on both sides of the mountains.”

“Mark,” said Dan. “It will
all blow over. This item of yours will be remembered
and talked about when the rest of your Enterprise work
is forgotten.”

Both Goodman and De Quille were right. In a month
papers and people had forgotten their humiliation
and laughed. “The Dutch Nick Massacre”
gave to its perpetrator and to the Enterprise an added
vogue.

—­[For full text of the “Dutch Nick”
hoax see Appendix C, at the end of last volume:
also, for an anecdote concerning a reporting excursion
made by Alf. Doten and Mark Twain.]—­

XLII
REPORTORIAL DAYS

Reference has already been made to the fashion among
Virginia City papers of permitting reporters to use
the editorial columns for ridicule of one another.
This custom was especially in vogue during the period
when Dan de Quille and Mark Twain and The Unreliable
were the shining journalistic lights of the Comstock.
Scarcely a week went by that some apparently venomous
squib or fling or long burlesque assault did not appear
either in the Union or the Enterprise, with one of
those jokers as its author and another as its target.
In one of his “home” letters of that year
Mark Twain says:

I have just finished writing
up my report for the morning paper and
giving The Unreliable a column
of advice about how to conduct
himself in church.

The advice was such as to call for a reprisal, but
it apparently made no difference in personal relations,
for a few weeks later he is with The Unreliable in
San Francisco, seeing life in the metropolis, fairly
swimming in its delights, unable to resist reporting
them to his mother.

Page 136

We fag ourselves completely out every
day and go to sleep without rocking every night.
When I go down Montgomery Street shaking hands with
Tom, Dick, and Harry, it is just like being on Main
Street in Hannibal and meeting the old familiar
faces. I do hate to go back to Washoe.
We take trips across the bay to Oakland, and down to
San Leandro and Alameda, and we go out to the
Willows and Hayes Park and Fort Point, and up
to Benicia; and yesterday we were invited out on a
yachting excursion, and had a sail in the fastest yacht
on the Pacific coast. Rice says: “Oh
no—­we are not having any fun, Mark —­oh
no—­I reckon it’s somebody else—­it’s
probably the gentleman in the wagon” (popular
slang phrase), and when I invite Rice to the Lick
House to dinner the proprietor sends us champagne and
claret, and then we do put on the most disgusting
airs. The Unreliable says our caliber is
too light—­we can’t stand it to be
noticed.

Three days later he adds that he is going sorrowfully
“to the snows and the deserts of Washoe,”
but that he has “lived like a lord to make up
for two years of privation.”

Twenty dollars is inclosed in each of these letters,
probably as a bribe to Jane Clemens to be lenient
with his prodigalities, which in his youthful love
of display he could not bring himself to conceal.
But apparently the salve was futile, for in another
letter, a month later, he complains that his mother
is “slinging insinuations” at him again,
such as “where did you get that money”
and “the company I kept in San Francisco.”
He explains:

Why, I sold Wild Cat mining ground that
was given me, and my credit was always good at
the bank for $2,000 or $3,000, and I never gamble
in any shape or manner, and never drink anything
stronger than claret and lager beer, which conduct
is regarded as miraculously temperate in this
place. As for company, I went in the very best
company to be found in San Francisco. I always
move in the best society in Virginia and have
a reputation to preserve.

He closes by assuring her that he will be more careful
in future and that she need never fear but that he
will keep her expenses paid. Then he cannot refrain
from adding one more item of his lavish life:

“Put in my washing, and it costs me one hundred
dollars a month to live.”

De Quille had not missed the opportunity of his comrade’s
absence to payoff some old scores. At the end
of the editorial column of the Enterprise on the day
following his departure he denounced the absent one
and his “protege,” The Unreliable, after
the intemperate fashion of the day.

It is to be regretted that such scrubs
are ever permitted to visit the bay, as the inevitable
effect will be to destroy that exalted opinion
of the manners and morality of our people which was
inspired by the conduct of our senior editor—­[which
is to say, Dan himself]—.

The diatribe closed with a really graceful poem, and
the whole was no doubt highly regarded by the Enterprise
readers.

Page 137

What revenge Mark Twain took on his return has not
been recorded, but it was probably prompt and adequate;
or he may have left it to The Unreliable. It
was clearly a mistake, however, to leave his own local
work in the hands of that properly named person a little
later. Clemens was laid up with a cold, and Rice
assured him on his sacred honor that he would attend
faithfully to the Enterprise locals, along with his
own Union items. He did this, but he had been
nursing old injuries too long. What was Mark
Twain’s amazement on looking over the Enterprise
next morning to find under the heading “Apologetic”
a statement over his own nom de plume, purporting
to be an apology for all the sins of ridicule to the
various injured ones.

To Mayor Arick, Hon. Wm. Stewart, Marshal
Perry, Hon. J. B. Winters, Mr. Olin, and Samuel
Wetherill, besides a host of others whom we have
ridiculed from behind the shelter of our reportorial
position, we say to these gentlemen we acknowledge
our faults, and, in all weakness and humility
upon our bended marrow bones, we ask their forgiveness,
promising that in future we will give them no cause
for anything but the best of feeling toward us.
To “Young Wilson” and The Unreliable
(as we have wickedly termed them), we feel that no
apology we can make begins to atone for the many
insults we have given them. Toward these
gentlemen we have been as mean as a man could
be—­and we have always prided ourselves on
this base quality. We feel that we are the
least of all humanity, as it were. We will now
go in sack-cloth and ashes for the next forty days.

This in his own paper over his own signature was a
body blow; but it had the effect of curing his cold.
He was back in the office forthwith, and in the next
morning’s issue denounced his betrayer.

We are to blame for giving The Unreliable
an opportunity to misrepresent us, and therefore
refrain from repining to any great extent at the
result. We simply claim the right to deny the
truth of every statement made by him in yesterday’s
paper, to annul all apologies he coined as coming
from us, and to hold him up to public commiseration
as a reptile endowed with no more intellect, no more
cultivation, no more Christian principle than animates
and adorns the sportive jackass-rabbit of the
Sierras. We have done.

These were the things that enlivened Comstock journalism.
Once in a boxing bout Mark Twain got a blow on the
nose which caused it to swell to an unusual size and
shape. He went out of town for a few days, during
which De Quille published an extravagant account of
his misfortune, describing the nose and dwelling on
the absurdity of Mark Twain’s ever supposing
himself to be a boxer.

De Quille scored heavily with this item but his own
doom was written. Soon afterward he was out riding
and was thrown from his horse and bruised considerably.

This was Mark’s opportunity. He gave an
account of Dan’s disaster; then, commenting,
he said:

Page 138

The idea of a plebeian like Dan supposing
he could ever ride a horse! He! why, even
the cats and the chickens laughed when they saw
him go by. Of course, he would be thrown off.
Of course, any well-bred horse wouldn’t
let a common, underbred person like Dan stay on
his back! When they gathered him up he was just
a bag of scraps, but they put him together, and
you’ll find him at his old place in the
Enterprise office next week, still laboring under the
delusion that he’s a newspaper man.

The author of ‘Roughing It’ tells of a
literary periodical called the Occidental, started
in Virginia City by a Mr. F. This was the silver-tongued
Tom Fitch, of the Union, an able speaker and writer,
vastly popular on the Coast. Fitch came to Clemens
one day and said he was thinking of starting such
a periodical and asked him what he thought of the
venture. Clemens said:

“You would succeed if any one could, but start
a flower-garden on the desert of Sahara; set up hoisting-works
on Mount Vesuvius for mining sulphur; start a literary
paper in Virginia City; h—­l!”

Which was a correct estimate of the situation, and
the paper perished with the third issue. It was
of no consequence except that it contained what was
probably the first attempt at that modern literary
abortion, the composite novel. Also, it died
too soon to publish Mark Twain’s first verses
of any pretension, though still of modest merit—­“The
Aged Pilot Man”—­which were thereby
saved for ‘Roughing It.’

Visiting Virginia now, it seems curious that any of
these things could have happened there. The Comstock
has become little more than a memory; Virginia and
Gold Hill are so quiet, so voiceless, as to constitute
scarcely an echo of the past. The International
Hotel, that once so splendid edifice, through whose
portals the tide of opulent life then ebbed and flowed,
is all but deserted now. One may wander at will
through its dingy corridors and among its faded fripperies,
seeking in vain for attendance or hospitality, the
lavish welcome of a vanished day. Those things
were not lacking once, and the stream of wealth tossed
up and down the stair and billowed up C Street, an
ebullient tide of metals and men from which millionaires
would be struck out, and individuals known in national
affairs. William M. Stewart who would one day
become a United States Senator, was there, an unnoticed
unit; and John Mackay and James G. Fair, one a senator
by and by, and both millionaires, but poor enough
then—­Fair with a pick on his shoulder and
Mackay, too, at first, though he presently became
a mine superintendent. Once in those days Mark
Twain banteringly offered to trade businesses with
Mackay.

“No,” Mackay said, “I can’t
trade. My business is not worth as much as yours.
I have never swindled anybody, and I don’t intend
to begin now.”

Neither of those men could dream that within ten years
their names would be international property; that
in due course Nevada would propose statues to their
memory.

Page 139

Such things came out of the Comstock; such things
spring out of every turbulent frontier.

XLIII

ARTEMUS WARD

Madame Caprell’s warning concerning Mark Twain’s
health at twenty-eight would seem to have been justified.
High-strung and neurotic, the strain of newspaper
work and the tumult of the Comstock had told on him.
As in later life, he was subject to bronchial colds,
and more than once that year he found it necessary
to drop all work and rest for a time at Steamboat
Springs, a place near Virginia City, where there were
boiling springs and steaming fissures in the mountain-side,
and a comfortable hotel. He contributed from
there sketches somewhat more literary in form than
any of his previous work. “Curing a Cold”
is a more or less exaggerated account of his ills.

[Included in Sketches New and Old.
“Information for the Million,” and
“Advice to Good Little Girls,” included
in the “Jumping Frog” Collection,
1867, but omitted from the Sketches, are also believed
to belong to this period.]

A portion of a playful letter to his mother, written
from the springs, still exists.

You have given my vanity a deadly thrust.
Behold, I am prone to boast of having the widest
reputation as a local editor of any man on the
Pacific coast, and you gravely come forward and tell
me “if I work hard and attend closely to
my business, I may aspire to a place on a big
San Francisco daily some day.” There’s
a comment on human vanity for you! Why, blast
it, I was under the impression that I could get
such a situation as that any time I asked for it.
But I don’t want it. No paper in the
United States can afford to pay me what my place
on the Enterprise is worth. If I were not naturally
a lazy, idle, good-for-nothing vagabond, I could
make it pay me $20,000 a year. But I don’t
suppose I shall ever be any account. I lead
an easy life, though, and I don’t care a cent
whether school keeps or not. Everybody knows
me, and I fare like a prince wherever I go, be
it on this side of the mountain or the other.
And I am proud to say I am the most conceited
ass in the Territory.

You think that picture looks
old? Well, I can’t help it—­in
reality
I’m not as old as I
was when I was eighteen.

Which was a true statement, so far as his general
attitude was concerned. At eighteen, in New York
and Philadelphia, his letters had been grave, reflective,
advisory. Now they were mostly banter and froth,
lightly indifferent to the serious side of things,
though perhaps only pretendedly so, for the picture
did look old. From the shock and circumstance
of his brother’s death he—­had never
recovered. He was barely twenty-eight. From
the picture he might have been a man of forty.

It was that year that Artemus Ward (Charles F. Browne)
came to Virginia City. There was a fine opera-house
in Virginia, and any attraction that billed San Francisco
did not fail to play to the Comstock. Ward intended
staying only a few days to deliver his lectures, but
the whirl of the Comstock caught him like a maelstrom,
and he remained three weeks.

Page 140

He made the Enterprise office his headquarters, and
fairly reveled in the company he found there.
He and Mark Twain became boon companions. Each
recognized in the other a kindred spirit. With
Goodman, De Quille, and McCarthy, also E. E. Hingston—­Ward’s
agent, a companionable fellow—­they usually
dined at Chaumond’s, Virginia’s high-toned
French restaurant.

Those were three memorable weeks in Mark Twain’s
life. Artemus Ward was in the height of his fame,
and he encouraged his new-found brother-humorist and
prophesied great things of him. Clemens, on his
side, measured himself by this man who had achieved
fame, and perhaps with good reason concluded that
Ward’s estimate was correct, that he too could
win fame and honor, once he got a start. If he
had lacked ambition before Ward’s visit, the
latter’s unqualified approval inspired him with
that priceless article of equipment. He put his
soul into entertaining the visitor during those three
weeks; and it was apparent to their associates that
he was at least Ward’s equal in mental stature
and originality. Goodman and the others began
to realize that for Mark Twain the rewards of the
future were to be measured only by his resolution and
ability to hold out. On Christmas Eve Artemus
lectured in Silver City and afterward came to the
Enterprise office to give the boys a farewell dinner.
The Enterprise always published a Christmas carol,
and Goodman sat at his desk writing it. He was
just finishing as Ward came in:

“Slave, slave,” said Artemus. “Come
out and let me banish care from you.”

They got the boys and all went over to Chaumond’s,
where Ward commanded Goodman to order the dinner.
When the cocktails came on, Artemus lifted his glass
and said:

“I give you Upper Canada.”

The company rose, drank the toast in serious silence;
then Goodman said:

“Of course, Artemus, it’s all right, but
why did you give us Upper Canada?”

“Because I don’t want it myself,”
said Ward, gravely.

Then began a rising tide of humor that could hardly
be matched in the world to-day. Mark Twain had
awakened to a fuller power; Artemus Ward was in his
prime. They were giants of a race that became
extinct when Mark Twain died. The youth, the
wine, the whirl of lights and life, the tumult of
the shouting street-it was as if an electric stream
of inspiration poured into those two human dynamos
and sent them into a dazzling, scintillating whirl.
All gone—­as evanescent, as forgotten, as
the lightnings of that vanished time; out of that vast
feasting and entertainment only a trifling morsel
remains. Ward now and then asked Goodman why
he did not join in the banter. Goodman said:

“I’m preparing a joke, Artemus, but I’m
keeping it for the present.”

It was near daybreak when Ward at last called for
the bill. It was two hundred and thirty-seven
dollars.

“What"’ exclaimed Artemus.

Page 141

“That’s my joke.” said Goodman.

“But I was only exclaiming because it was not
twice as much,” returned Ward.

He paid it amid laughter, and they went out into the
early morning air. It was fresh and fine outside,
not yet light enough to see clearly. Artemus
threw his face up to the sky and said:

“I feel glorious. I feel like walking on
the roofs.”

Virginia was built on the steep hillside, and the
eaves of some of the houses almost touched the ground
behind them.

“There is your chance, Artemus,” Goodman
said, pointing to a row of these houses all about
of a height.

Artemus grabbed Mark Twain, and they stepped out upon
the long string of roofs and walked their full length,
arm in arm. Presently the others noticed a lonely
policeman cocking his revolver and getting ready to
aim in their direction. Goodman called to him:

“Wait a minute. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to shoot those burglars,”
he said.

“Don’t for your life. Those are not
burglars. That’s Mark Twain and Artemus
Ward.”

The roof-walkers returned, and the party went down
the street to a corner across from the International
Hotel. A saloon was there with a barrel lying
in front, used, perhaps for a sort of sign. Artemus
climbed astride the barrel, and somebody brought a
beer-glass and put it in his hand. Virginia City
looks out over the Eastward Desert. Morning was
just breaking upon the distant range-the scene as beautiful
as when the sunrise beams across the plain of Memnon.
The city was not yet awake. The only living creatures
in sight were the group of belated diners, with Artemus
Ward, as King Gambrinus, pouring a libation to the
sunrise.

That was the beginning of a week of glory. The
farewell dinner became a series. At the close
of one convivial session Artemus went to a concert-hall,
the “Melodeon,” blacked his face, and delivered
a speech. He got away from Virginia about the
close of the year.

A day or two later he wrote from Austin, Nevada, to
his new-found comrade as “My dearest Love,”
recalling the happiness of his stay:

“I shall always remember Virginia as a bright
spot in my existence, as all others must or rather
cannot be, as it were.”

Then reflectively he adds:

“Some of the finest intellects in the world
have been blunted by liquor.”

Rare Artemus Ward and rare Mark Twain! If there
lies somewhere a place of meeting and remembrance,
they have not failed to recall there those closing
days of ’63.

XLIV

Governorofthe “Thirdhouse”

With Artemus Ward’s encouragement, Clemens began
to think of extending his audience eastward.
The New York Sunday Mercury published literary matter.
Ward had urged him to try this market, and promised
to write a special letter to the editors, introducing
Mark Twain and his work. Clemens prepared a sketch
of the Comstock variety, scarcely refined in character
and full of personal allusion, a humor not suited to
the present-day reader. Its general subject was
children; it contained some absurd remedies, supposedly
sent to his old pilot friend Zeb Leavenworth, and
was written as much for a joke on that good-natured
soul as for profit or reputation.

Page 142

“I wrote it especially for Beck Jolly’s
use,” the author declares, in a letter to his
mother, “so he could pester Zeb with it.”

We cannot know to-day whether Zeb was pestered or
not. A faded clipping is all that remains of
the incident. As literature the article, properly
enough, is lost to the world at large. It is only
worth remembering as his metropolitan beginning.
Yet he must have thought rather highly of it (his
estimation of his own work was always unsafe), for
in the letter above quoted he adds:

I cannot write regularly for the Mercury,
of course, I sha’n’t have time.
But sometimes I throw off a pearl (there is no self-conceit
about that, I beg you to observe) which ought for
the eternal welfare of my race to have a more
extensive circulation than is afforded by a local
daily paper.

And if Fitzhugh Ludlow (author of the
‘Hasheesh Eater’) comes your way,
treat him well. He published a high encomium upon
Mark Twain (the same being eminently just and
truthful, I beseech you to believe) in a San Francisco
paper. Artemus Ward said that when my gorgeous
talents were publicly acknowledged by such high authority
I ought to appreciate them myself, leave sage-brush
obscurity, and journey to New York with him, as
he wanted me to do. But I preferred not to
burst upon the New York public too suddenly and brilliantly,
so I concluded to remain here.

He was in Carson City when this was written, preparing
for the opening of the next legislature. He was
beyond question now the most conspicuous figure of
the capital; also the most wholesomely respected, for
his influence had become very large. It was said
that he could control more votes than any legislative
member, and with his friends, Simmons and Clagget,
could pass or defeat any bill offered. The Enterprise
was a powerful organ—­to be courted and
dreaded—­and Mark Twain had become its chief
tribune. That he was fearless, merciless, and
incorruptible, without doubt had a salutary influence
on that legislative session. He reveled in his
power; but it is not recorded that he ever abused it.
He got a bill passed, largely increasing Orion’s
official fees, but this was a crying need and was
so recognized. He made no secret promises, none
at all that he did not intend to fulfill. “Sam’s
word was as fixed as fate,” Orion records, and
it may be added that he was morally as fearless.

The two Houses of the last territorial legislature
of Nevada assembled January 12, 1864.—­[Nevada
became a State October 31, 1864.]—­A few
days later a “Third House” was organized—­an
institution quite in keeping with the happy atmosphere
of that day and locality, for it was a burlesque organization,
and Mark Twain was selected as its “Governor.”

The new House prepared to make a public occasion of
this first session, and its Governor was required
to furnish a message. Then it was decided to
make it a church benefit. The letters exchanged
concerning this proposition still exist; they explain
themselves:

Page 143

Carsoncity,
January 23, 1864.

Gov. Marktwain,
Understanding from certain members of the Third
House of the territorial Legislature that that
body will have
effected a permanent organization within a day
or two, and be ready
for the reception of your Third Annual Message,—­[
There had been
no former message. This was regarded as a
great joke.]—­we desire
to ask your permission, and that of the Third
House, to turn the
affair to the benefit of the Church by charging
toll-roads,
franchises, and other persons a dollar apiece
for the privilege of
listening to your communication.
S. Pixley,
G. A. Sears,
Trustees.

Carsoncity,
January 23, 1864.

Gentlemen,—­Certainly.
If the public can find anything in a grave state
paper worth paying a dollar for, I am willing they
should pay that amount, or any other; and although
I am not a very dusty Christian myself, I take
an absorbing interest in religious affairs, and
would willingly inflict my annual message upon the
Church itself if it might derive benefit thereby.
You can charge what you please; I promise the
public no amusement, but I do promise a reasonable
amount of instruction. I am responsible to
the Third House only, and I hope to be permitted
to make it exceedingly warm for that body, without
caring whether the sympathies of the public and the
Church be enlisted in their favor, and against
myself, or not.
Respectfully,marktwain.

Mark Twain’s reply is closely related to his
later style in phrase and thought. It might have
been written by him at almost any subsequent period.
Perhaps his association with Artemus Ward had awakened
a new perception of the humorous idea—­a
humor of repression, of understatement. He forgot
this often enough, then and afterward, and gave his
riotous fancy free rein; but on the whole the simpler,
less florid form seemingly began to attract him more
and more.

His address as Governor of the Third House has not
been preserved, but those who attended always afterward
referred to it as the “greatest effort of his
life.” Perhaps for that audience and that
time this verdict was justified.

It was his first great public opportunity. On
the stage about him sat the membership of the Third
House; the building itself was packed, the aisles
full. He knew he could let himself go in burlesque
and satire, and he did. He was unsparing in his
ridicule of the Governor, the officials in general,
the legislative members, and of individual citizens.
From the beginning to the end of his address the audience
was in a storm of laughter and applause. With
the exception of the dinner speech made to the printers
in Keokuk, it was his first public utterance —­the
beginning of a lifelong series of triumphs.

Page 144

Only one thing marred his success. Little Carrie
Pixley, daughter of one of the “trustees,”
had promised to be present and sit in a box next the
stage. It was like him to be fond of the child,
and he had promised to send a carriage for her.
Often during his address he glanced toward the box;
but it remained empty. When the affair was ended,
he drove home with her father to inquire the reason.
They found the little girl, in all her finery, weeping
on the bed. Then he remembered he had forgotten
to send the carriage; and that was like him, too.

For his Third House address Judge A. W. (Sandy) Baldwin
and Theodore Winters presented him with a gold watch
inscribed to “Governor Mark Twain.”
He was more in demand now than ever; no social occasion
was regarded as complete without him. His doings
were related daily and his sayings repeated on the
streets. Most of these things have passed away
now, but a few are still recalled with smiles.
Once, when conundrums were being asked at a party,
he was urged to make one.

“Well,” he sand, “why am I like
the Pacific Ocean?”

Several guesses were made, but none satisfied him.
Finally all gave it up.

“Tell us, Mark, why are you like the Pacific
Ocean?”

“I don’t know,” he drawled.
“I was just asking for information.”

At another time, when a young man insisted on singing
a song of eternal length, the chorus of which was,
“I’m going home, I’m going home,
I’m going home tomorrow,” Mark Twain put
his head in the window and said, pleadingly:

“For God’s sake go to-night.”

But he was also fond of quieter society. Sometimes,
after the turmoil of a legislative morning, he would
drop in to Miss Keziah Clapp’s school and listen
to the exercises, or would call on Colonel Curry—­“old
Curry, old Abe Curry”—­and if the
colonel happened to be away, he would talk with Mrs.
Curry, a motherly soul (still alive at ninety-three,
in 1910), and tell her of his Hannibal boyhood or
his river and his mining adventures, and keep her
laughing until the tears ran.

He was a great pedestrian in those days. Sometimes
he walked from Virginia to Carson, stopping at Colonel
Curry’s as he came in for rest and refreshment.

“Mrs. Curry,” he said once, “I have
seen tireder men than I am, and lazier men, but they
were dead men.” He liked the home feeling
there —­the peace and motherly interest.
Deep down, he was lonely and homesick; he was always
so away from his own kindred.

Clemens returned now to Virginia City, and, like all
other men who ever met her, became briefly fascinated
by the charms of Adah Isaacs Menken, who was playing
Mazeppa at the Virginia Opera House. All men—­kings,
poets, priests, prize-fighters—­fell under
Menken’s spell. Dan de Quille and Mark
Twain entered into a daily contest as to who could
lavish the most fervid praise on her in the Enterprise.
The latter carried her his literary work to criticize.
He confesses this in one of his home letters, perhaps
with a sort of pride.

Page 145

I took it over to show to Miss Menken the actress,
Orpheus C. Ken’s wife. She is a literary
cuss herself.

She has a beautiful white hand, but her handwriting
is infamous; she writes fast and her chirography is
of the door-plate order—­her letters are
immense. I gave her a conundrum, thus:

“My dear madam, why ought your hand to retain
its present grace and beauty always? Because
you fool away devilish little of it on your manuscript.”

But Menken was gone presently, and when he saw her
again, somewhat later, in San Francisco, his “madness”
would have seemed to have been allayed.

XLV

A COMSTOCK DUEL

The success—­such as it was—­of
his occasional contributions to the New York Sunday
Mercury stirred Mark Twain’s ambition for a wider
field of labor. Circumstance, always ready to
meet his wishes, offered assistance, though in an
unexpected form.

Goodman, temporarily absent, had left Clemens in editorial
charge. As in that earlier day, when Orion had
visited Tennessee and returned to find his paper in
a hot personal warfare with certain injured citizens,
so the Enterprise, under the same management, had
stirred up trouble. It was just at the time of
the “Flour Sack Sanitary Fund,” the story
of which is related at length in ‘Roughing It’.
In the general hilarity of this occasion, certain
Enterprise paragraphs of criticism or ridicule had
incurred the displeasure of various individuals whose
cause naturally enough had been espoused by a rival
paper, the Chronicle. Very soon the original
grievance, whatever it was, was lost sight of in the
fireworks and vitriol-throwing of personal recrimination
between Mark Twain and the Chronicle editor, then
a Mr. Laird.

A point had been reached at length when only a call
for bloodshed—­a challenge—­could
satisfy either the staff or the readers of the two
papers. Men were killed every week for milder
things than the editors had spoken each of the other.
Joe Goodman himself, not so long before, had fought
a duel with a Union editor—­Tom Fitch—­and
shot him in the leg, so making of him a friend, and
a lame man, for life. In Joe’s absence
the prestige of the paper must be maintained.

Mark Twain himself has told in burlesque the story
of his duel, keeping somewhat nearer to the fact than
was his custom in such writing, as may be seen by
comparing it with the account of his abettor and second—­of
course, Steve Gillis. The account is from Mr.
Gillis’s own hand:

When Joe went away, he left Sam in editorial
charge of the paper. That was a dangerous
thing to do. Nobody could ever tell what Sam
was going to write. Something he said stirred
up Mr. Laird, of the Chronicle, who wrote a reply
of a very severe kind. He said some things
that we told Mark could only be wiped out with blood.
Those were the days when almost every man in Virginia

Page 146

City had fought with pistols either impromptu
or premeditated duels. I had been in several,
but then mine didn’t count. Most of them
were of the impromptu kind. Mark hadn’t
had any yet, and we thought it about time that
his baptism took place.

He was not eager for it; he was averse
to violence, but we finally prevailed upon him
to send Laird a challenge, and when Laird did not
send a reply at once we insisted on Mark sending
him another challenge, by which time he had made
himself believe that he really wanted to fight,
as much as we wanted him to do. Laird concluded
to fight, at last. I helped Mark get up some
of the letters, and a man who would not fight
after such letters did not belong in Virginia City—­in
those days.

Laird’s acceptance of
Mark’s challenge came along about midnight, I
think, after the papers had
gone to press. The meeting was to take
place next morning at sunrise.

Of course I was selected as Mark’s
second, and at daybreak I had him up and out for
some lessons in pistol practice before meeting Laird.
I didn’t have to wake him. He had not
been asleep. We had been talking since midnight
over the duel that was coming. I had been telling
him of the different duels in which I had taken part,
either as principal or second, and how many men
I had helped to kill and bury, and how it was
a good plan to make a will, even if one had not much
to leave. It always looked well, I told him, and
seemed to be a proper thing to do before going
into a duel. So Mark made a will with a sort
of gloomy satisfaction, and as soon as it was light
enough to see, we went out to a little ravine near
the meeting- place, and I set up a board for him
to shoot at. He would step out, raise that
big pistol, and when I would count three he would shut
his eyes and pull the trigger. Of course he
didn’t hit anything; he did not come anywhere
near hitting anything. Just then we heard somebody
shooting over in the next ravine. Sam said:

“What’s that,
Steve?”

“Why,” I said,
“that’s Laud. His seconds are practising
him over
there.”

It didn’t make my principal
any more cheerful to hear that pistol go
off every few seconds over
there. Just then I saw a little mud-hen
light on some sage-brush about
thirty yards away.

“Mark,” I said,
“let me have that pistol. I’ll show
you how to
shoot.”

He handed it to me, and I let go at
the bird and shot its head off, clean. About
that time Laird and his second came over the ridge
to meet us. I saw them coming and handed
Mark back the pistol. We were looking at
the bird when they came up.

“Who did that?”
asked Laird’s second.

“Sam,” I said.

“How far off was it?”

“Oh, about thirty yards.”

“Can he do it again?”

“Of course,” I
said; “every time. He could do it twice
that far.”

Page 147

Laud’s second turned
to his principal.

“Laird,” he said,
“you don’t want to fight that man.
It’s just like
suicide. You’d
better settle this thing, now.”

So there was a settlement. Laird
took back all he had said; Mark said he really
had nothing against Laird—­the discussion
had been purely journalistic and did not need
to be settled in blood. He said that both
he and Laird were probably the victims of their friends.
I remember one of the things Laird said when his second
told him he had better not fight.

“Fight! H—­l,
no! I am not going to be murdered by that d—­d
desperado.”

Sam had sent another challenge to a
man named Cutler, who had been somehow mixed up
with the muss and had written Sam an insulting letter;
but Cutler was out of town at the time, and before
he got back we had received word from Jerry Driscoll,
foreman of the Grand jury, that the law just passed,
making a duel a penitentiary offense for both
principal and second, was to be strictly enforced,
and unless we got out of town in a limited number
of hours we would be the first examples to test
the new law.

We concluded to go, and when the stage left next morning
for San Francisco we were on the outside seat.
Joe Goodman had returned by this time and agreed to
accompany us as far as Henness Pass. We were all
in good spirits and glad we were alive, so Joe did
not stop when he got to Henness Pass, but kept on.
Now and then he would say, “Well, I had better
be going back pretty soon,” but he didn’t
go, and in the end he did not go back at all, but
went with us clear to San Francisco, and we had a
royal good time all the way. I never knew any
series of duels to close so happily.

So ended Mark Twain’s career on the Comstock.
He had come to it a weary pilgrim, discouraged and
unknown; he was leaving it with a new name and fame—­elate,
triumphant, even if a fugitive.

XLVI

GETTING SETTLED IN SAN FRANCISCO

This was near the end of May, 1864. The intention
of both Gillis and Clemens was to return to the States;
but once in San Francisco both presently accepted
places, Clemens as reporter and Gillis as compositor,
on the ‘Morning Call’.

From ‘Roughing It’ the reader gathers
that Mark Twain now entered into a life of butterfly
idleness on the strength of prospective riches to be
derived from the “half a trunkful of mining stocks,”
and that presently, when the mining bubble exploded,
he was a pauper. But a good many liberties have
been taken with the history of this period. Undoubtedly
he expected opulent returns from his mining stocks,
and was disappointed, particularly in an investment
in Hale and Norcross shares, held too long for the
large profit which could have been made by selling
at the proper time.

Page 148

The fact is, he spent not more than a few days—­a
fortnight at most—­in “butterfly idleness,”
at the Lick House before he was hard at work on the
‘Call’, living modestly with Steve Gillis
in the quietest place they could find, never quiet
enough, but as far as possible from dogs and cats
and chickens and pianos, which seemed determined to
make the mornings hideous, when a weary night reporter
and compositor wanted to rest. They went out
socially, on occasion, arrayed in considerable elegance;
but their recreations were more likely to consist
of private midnight orgies, after the paper had gone
to press—­mild dissipations in whatever they
could find to eat at that hour, with a few glasses
of beer, and perhaps a game of billiards or pool in
some all-night resort. A printer by the name
of Ward—­“Little Ward,”—­[L.
P. Ward; well known as an athlete in San Francisco.
He lost his mind and fatally shot himself in 1903.]
—­they called him—­often went with
them for these refreshments. Ward and Gillis
were both bantam game-cocks, and sometimes would stir
up trouble for the very joy of combat. Clemens
never cared for that sort of thing and discouraged
it, but Ward and Gillis were for war. “They
never assisted each other. If one had offered
to assist the other against some overgrown person,
it would have been an affront, and a battle would have
followed between that pair of little friends.”—­[S.
L. C., 1906.]—­Steve Gillis in particular,
was fond of incidental encounters, a characteristic
which would prove an important factor somewhat later
in shaping Mark Twain’s career. Of course,
the more strenuous nights were not frequent.
Their home-going was usually tame enough and they were
glad enough to get there.

Clemens, however, was never quite ready for sleep.
Then, as ever, he would prop himself up in bed, light
his pipe, and lose himself in English or French history
until sleep conquered. His room-mate did not approve
of this habit; it interfered with his own rest, and
with his fiendish tendency to mischief he found reprisal
in his own fashion. Knowing his companion’s
highly organized nervous system he devised means of
torture which would induce him to put out the light.
Once he tied a nail to a string; an arrangement which
he kept on the floor behind the bed. Pretending
to be asleep, he would hold the end of the string,
and lift it gently up and down, making a slight ticking
sound on the floor, maddening to a nervous man.
Clemens would listen a moment and say:

“What in the nation is that noise”

Gillis’s pretended sleep and the ticking would
continue.

Clemens would sit up in bed, fling aside his book,
and swear violently.

“Steve, what is that d—­d noise?”
he would say.

Steve would pretend to rouse sleepily.

“What’s the matter, Sam? What noise?
Oh, I guess that is one of those death-ticks; they
don’t like the light. Maybe it will stop
in a minute.”

Page 149

It usually did stop about that time, and the reading
would be apt to continue. But no sooner was there
stillness than it began again—­tick, tick,
tick. With a wild explosion of blasphemy, the
book would go across the floor and the light would
disappear. Sometimes, when he couldn’t
sleep, he would dress and walk out in the street for
an hour, while the cruel Steve slept like the criminal
that he was.

At last, one night, he overdid the thing and was caught.
His tortured room-mate at first reviled him, then
threatened to kill him, finally put him to shame.
It was curious, but they always loved each other, those
two; there was never anything resembling an estrangement,
and to his last days Mark Twain never could speak
of Steve Gillis without tenderness.

They moved a great many times in San Francisco.
Their most satisfactory residence was on a bluff on
California Street. Their windows looked down
on a lot of Chinese houses—­“tin-can
houses,” they were called—­small wooden
shanties covered with beaten-out cans. Steve and
Mark would look down on these houses, waiting until
all the Chinamen were inside; then one of them would
grab an empty beer-bottle, throw it down on those tin
can roofs, and dodge behind the blinds. The Chinamen
would swarm out and look up at the row of houses on
the edge of the bluff, shake their fists, and pour
out Chinese vituperation. By and by, when they
had retired and everything was quiet again, their
tormentors would throw another bottle. This was
their Sunday amusement.

At a place on Minna Street they lived with a private
family. At first Clemens was delighted.

“Just look at it, Steve,” he said.
“What a nice, quiet place. Not a thing
to disturb us.”

But next morning a dog began to howl. Gillis
woke this time, to find his room-mate standing in
the door that opened out into a back garden, holding
a big revolver, his hand shaking with cold and excitement.

“Came here, Steve,” he said. “Come
here and kill him. I’m so chilled through
I can’t get a bead on him.”

“Sam,” said Steve, “don’t
shoot him. Just swear at him. You can easily
kill him at that range with your profanity.”

Steve Gillis declares that Mark Twain then let go
such a scorching, singeing blast that the brute’s
owner sold him next day for a Mexican hairless dog.

We gather that they moved, on an average, about once
a month. A home letter of September 25, 1864,
says:

We have been here only four months,
yet we have changed our lodging five times.
We are very comfortably fixed where we are now and
have no fault to find with the rooms or the people.
We are the only lodgers-in a well-to-do private
family . . . . But I need change and must
move again.

This was the Minna Street place—­the place
of the dog. In the same letter he mentions having
made a new arrangement with the Call, by which he
is to receive twenty-five dollars a week, with no more
night-work; he says further that he has closed with
the Californian for weekly articles at twelve dollars
each.

Page 150

XLVII

BOHEMIAN DAYS

Mark Twain’s position on the ‘Call’
was uncongenial from the start. San Francisco
was a larger city than Virginia; the work there was
necessarily more impersonal, more a routine of news-gathering
and drudgery. He once set down his own memories
of it:

At nine in the morning I had to be at
the police court for an hour and make a brief
history of the squabbles of the night before.
They were usually between Irishmen and Irishmen,
and Chinamen and Chinamen, with now and then a
squabble between the two races, for a change.

During the rest of the day we raked
the town from end to end, gathering such material
as we might, wherewith to fill our required columns;
and if there were no fires to report, we started some.
At night we visited the six theaters, one after
the other, seven nights in the week. We remained
in each of those places five minutes, got the
merest passing glimpse of play and opera, and with
that for a text we “wrote up” those
plays and operas, as the phrase goes, torturing
our souls every night in the effort to find something
to say about those performances which we had not
said a couple of hundred times before.

It was fearful drudgery-soulless
drudgery—­and almost destitute of
interest. It was an awful
slavery for a lazy man.

On the Enterprise he had been free, with a liberty
that amounted to license. He could write what
he wished, and was personally responsible to the readers.
On the Call he was simply a part of a news-machine;
restricted by a policy, the whole a part of a still
greater machine —­politics. Once he
saw some butchers set their dogs on an unoffending
Chinaman, a policeman looking on with amused interest.
He wrote an indignant article criticizing the city
government and raking the police. In Virginia
City this would have been a welcome delight; in San
Francisco it did not appear.

At another time he found a policeman asleep on his
beat. Going to a near-by vegetable stall he borrowed
a large cabbage-leaf, came back and stood over the
sleeper, gently fanning him. It would be wasted
effort to make an item of this incident; but he could
publish it in his own fashion. He stood there
fanning the sleeping official until a large crowd
collected. When he thought it was large enough
he went away. Next day the joke was all over
the city.

Only one of the several severe articles he wrote criticizing
officials and institutions seems to have appeared—­an
attack on an undertaker whose establishment formed
a branch of the coroner’s office. The management
of this place one day refused information to a Call
reporter, and the next morning its proprietor was
terrified by a scathing denunciation of his firm.
It began, “Those body-snatchers” and continued
through half a column of such scorching strictures
as only Mark Twain could devise. The Call’s
policy of suppression evidently did not include criticisms
of deputy coroners.

Page 151

Such liberty, however, was too rare for Mark Twain,
and he lost interest. He confessed afterward
that he became indifferent and lazy, and that George
E. Barnes, one of the publishers of the Call, at last
allowed him an assistant. He selected from the
counting-room a big, hulking youth by the name of
McGlooral, with the acquired prefix of “Smiggy.”
Clemens had taken a fancy to Smiggy McGlooral—­on
account of his name and size perhaps—­and
Smiggy, devoted to his patron, worked like a slave
gathering news nights—­daytimes, too, if
necessary—­all of which was demoralizing
to a man who had small appetite for his place anyway.
It was only a question of time when Smiggy alone would
be sufficient for the job.

There were other and pleasanter things in San Francisco.
The personal and literary associations were worth
while. At his right hand in the Call office sat
Frank Soule—­a gentle spirit—­a
graceful versifier who believed himself a poet.
Mark Twain deferred to Frank Soule in those days.
He thought his verses exquisite in their workmanship;
a word of praise from Soule gave him happiness.
In a luxurious office up-stairs was another congenial
spirit—­a gifted, handsome fellow of twenty-four,
who was secretary of the Mint, and who presently became
editor of a new literary weekly, the Californian,
which Charles Henry Webb had founded. This young
man’s name was Francis Bret Harte, originally
from Albany, later a miner and school-teacher on the
Stanislaus, still later a compositor, finally a contributor,
on the Golden Era. His fame scarcely reached
beyond San Francisco as yet; but among the little coterie
of writing folk that clustered about the Era office
his rank was high. Mark Twain fraternized with
Bret Harte and the Era group generally. He felt
that he had reached the land—­or at least
the borderland—­of Bohemia, that Ultima
Thule of every young literary dream.

San Francisco did, in fact, have a very definite literary
atmosphere and a literature of its own. Its coterie
of writers had drifted from here and there, but they
had merged themselves into a California body-poetic,
quite as individual as that of Cambridge, even if less
famous, less fortunate in emoluments than the Boston
group. Joseph E. Lawrence, familiarly known as
“Joe” Lawrence, was editor of the Golden
Era,—­[The Golden Era, California’s
first literary publication, was founded by Rollin
M. Daggett and J. McDonough Foard in 1852.]—­and
his kindness and hospitality were accounted sufficient
rewards even when his pecuniary acknowledgments were
modest enough. He had a handsome office, and the
literati, local and visiting, used to gather there.
Names that would be well known later were included
in that little band. Joaquin Miller recalls from
an old diary, kept by him then, having seen Adah Isaacs
Menken, Prentice Mulford, Bret Harte, Charles Warren
Stoddard, Fitzhugh Ludlow, Mark Twain, Orpheus C.
Kerr, Artemus Ward, Gilbert Densmore, W. S. Kendall,
and Mrs. Hitchcock assembled there at one time.
The Era office would seem to have been a sort of Mount
Olympus, or Parnassus, perhaps; for these were mainly
poets, who had scarcely yet attained to the dignity
of gods. Miller was hardly more than a youth then,
and this grand assemblage impressed him, as did the
imposing appointments of the place.

Page 152

The Era rooms were elegant—­[he
says]—­,the most grandly carpeted and
most gorgeously furnished that I have ever seen.
Even now in my memory they seem to have been simply
palatial. I have seen the world well since
then—­all of its splendors worth seeing—­yet
those carpeted parlors, with Joe Lawrence and
his brilliant satellites, outshine all things
else, as I turn to look back.

More than any other city west of the Alleghanies,
San Francisco has always been a literary center; and
certainly that was a remarkable group to be out there
under the sunset, dropped down there behind the Sierras,
which the transcontinental railway would not climb
yet, for several years. They were a happy-hearted,
aspiring lot, and they got as much as five dollars
sometimes for an Era article, and were as proud of
it as if it had been a great deal more. They
felt that they were creating literature, as they were,
in fact; a new school of American letters mustered
there.

Mark Twain and Bret Harte were distinctive features
of this group. They were already recognized by
their associates as belonging in a class by themselves,
though as yet neither had done any of the work for
which he would be remembered later. They were
a good deal together, and it was when Harte was made
editor of the Californian that Mark Twain was put on
the weekly staff at the then unexampled twelve-dollar
rate. The Californian made larger pretensions
than the Era, and perhaps had a heavier financial
backing. With Mark Twain on the staff and Bret
Harte in the chair, himself a frequent contributor,
it easily ranked as first of San Francisco periodicals.
A number of the sketches collected by Webb later,
in Mark Twain’s first little volume, the Celebrated
Jumping Frog, Etc., appeared in the Era or Californian
in 1864 and 1865. They were smart, bright, direct,
not always refined, but probably the best humor of
the day. Some of them are still preserved in this
volume of sketches. They are interesting in what
they promise, rather than in what they present, though
some of them are still delightful enough. “The
Killing of Julius Caesar Localized” is an excellent
forerunner of his burlesque report of a gladiatorial
combat in The Innocents Abroad. The Answers to
Correspondents, with his vigorous admonition of the
statistical moralist, could hardly have been better
done at any later period. The Jumping Frog itself
was not originally of this harvest. It has a history
of its own, as we shall see a little further along.

The reportorial arrangement was of brief duration.
Even the great San Francisco earthquake of that day
did not awaken in Mark Twain any permanent enthusiasm
for the drudgery of the ‘Call’. He
had lost interest, and when Mark Twain lost interest
in a subject or an undertaking that subject or that
undertaking were better dead, so far as he was concerned.
His conclusion of service with the Call was certain,
and he wondered daily why it was delayed so long.

Page 153

The connection had become equally unsatisfactory to
proprietor and employee. They had a heart-to-heart
talk presently, with the result that Mark Twain was
free. He used to claim, in after-years, with
his usual tendency to confess the worst of himself,
that he was discharged, and the incident has been
variously told. George Barnes himself has declared
that Clemens resigned with great willingness.
It is very likely that the paragraph at the end of
Chapter lviii in ‘Roughing It’ presents
the situation with fair accuracy, though, as always,
the author makes it as unpleasant for himself as possible:

“At last one of the proprietors took me aside,
with a charity I still remember with considerable
respect, and gave me an opportunity to resign my berth,
and so save myself the disgrace of a dismissal.”

As an extreme contrast with the supposititious “butterfly
idleness” of his beginning in San Francisco,
and for no other discoverable reason, he doubtless
thought it necessary, in the next chapter of that book,
to depict himself as having reached the depths of
hard luck, debt, and poverty.

“I became an adept at slinking,” he says.
“I slunk from back street to back street....
I slunk to my bed. I had pawned everything but
the clothes I had on.”

This is pure fiction. That he occasionally found
himself short of funds is likely enough—­a
literary life invites that sort of thing—­but
that he ever clung to a single “silver ten-cent
piece,” as he tells us, and became the familiar
of mendicancy, was a condition supplied altogether
by his later imagination to satisfy what he must have
regarded as an artistic need. Almost immediately
following his separation from the ‘Call’
he arranged with Goodman to write a daily letter for
the Enterprise, reporting San Francisco matters after
his own notion with a free hand. His payment
for this work was thirty dollars a week, and he had
an additional return from his literary sketches.
The arrangement was an improvement both as to labor
and income.

Real affluence appeared on the horizon just then,
in the form of a liberal offer for the Tennessee land.
But alas! it was from a wine-grower who wished to
turn the tract into great vineyards, and Orion had
a prohibition seizure at the moment, so the trade was
not made. Orion further argued that the prospective
purchaser would necessarily be obliged to import horticultural
labor from Europe, and that those people might be
homesick, badly treated, and consequently unhappy in
those far eastern Tennessee mountains. Such was
Orion’s way.

XLVIII

THE REFUGE OF THE HILLS

Those who remember Mark Twain’s Enterprise letters
(they are no longer obtainable)—­[Many of
these are indeed now obtainable by a simple Web search.
D.W.]—­declare them to have been the greatest
series of daily philippics ever written. However
this may be, it is certain that they made a stir.
Goodman permitted him to say absolutely what he pleased
upon any subject. San Francisco was fairly weltering
in corruption, official and private. He assailed
whatever came first to hand with all the fierceness
of a flaming indignation long restrained.

Page 154

Quite naturally he attacked the police, and with such
ferocity and penetration that as soon as copies of
the Enterprise came from Virginia the City Hall began
to boil and smoke and threaten trouble. Martin
G. Burke, then chief of police, entered libel suit
against the Enterprise, prodigiously advertising that
paper, copies of which were snatched as soon as the
stage brought them.

Mark Twain really let himself go then. He wrote
a letter that on the outside was marked, “Be
sure and let Joe see this before it goes in.”
He even doubted himself whether Goodman would dare
to print it, after reading. It was a letter describing
the city’s corrupt morals under the existing
police government. It began, “The air is
full of lechery, and rumors of lechery,” and
continued in a strain which made even the Enterprise
printers aghast.

“You can never afford to publish that,”
the foreman said to, Goodman.

“Let it all go in, every word,” Goodman
answered. “If Mark can stand it, I can!”

It seemed unfortunate (at the time) that Steve Gillis
should select this particular moment to stir up trouble
that would involve both himself and Clemens with the
very officials which the latter had undertaken to
punish. Passing a saloon one night alone, Gillis
heard an altercation going on inside, and very naturally
stepped in to enjoy it. Including the barkeeper,
there were three against two. Steve ranged himself
on the weaker side, and selected the barkeeper, a
big bruiser, who, when the fight was over, was ready
for the hospital. It turned out that he was one
of Chief Burke’s minions, and Gillis was presently
indicted on a charge of assault with intent to kill.
He knew some of the officials in a friendly way, and
was advised to give a straw bond and go into temporary
retirement. Clemens, of course, went his bail,
and Steve set out for Virginia City, until the storm
blew over.

This was Burke’s opportunity. When the
case was called and Gillis did not appear, Burke promptly
instituted an action against his bondsman, with an
execution against his loose property. The watch
that had been given him as Governor of the Third House
came near being thus sacrificed in the cause of friendship,
and was only saved by skilful manipulation.

Now, it was down in the chain of circumstances that
Steve Gillis’s brother, James N. Gillis, a gentle-hearted
hermit, a pocket-miner of the halcyon Tuolumne district—­the
Truthful James of Bret Harte—­happened to
be in San Francisco at this time, and invited Clemens
to return with him to the far seclusion of his cabin
on Jackass Hill. In that peaceful retreat were
always rest and refreshment for the wayfarer, and more
than one weary writer besides Bret Harte had found
shelter there. James Gillis himself had fine
literary instincts, but he remained a pocket-miner
because he loved that quiet pursuit of gold, the Arcadian
life, the companionship of his books, the occasional
Bohemian pilgrim who found refuge in his retreat.

Page 155

It is said that the sick were made well, and the well
made better, in Jim Gillis’s cabin on the hilltop,
where the air was nectar and the stillness like enchantment.
One could mine there if he wished to do so; Jim would
always furnish him a promising claim, and teach him
the art of following the little fan-like drift of gold
specks to the nested deposit of nuggets somewhere up
the hillside. He regularly shared his cabin with
one Dick Stoker (Dick Baker, of ’Roughing It’),
another genial soul who long ago had retired from the
world to this forgotten land, also with Dick’s
cat, Tom Quartz; but there was always room for guests.

In ‘Roughing It’, and in a later story,
“The Californian’s Tale,” Mark Twain
has made us acquainted with the verdant solitude of
the Tuolumne hills, that dreamy, delicious paradise
where once a vast population had gathered when placer-mining
had been in its bloom, a dozen years before.
The human swarm had scattered when the washings failed
to pay, leaving only a quiet emptiness and the few
pocket-miners along the Stanislaus and among the hills.
Vast areas of that section present a strange appearance
to-day. Long stretches there are, crowded and
jammed and drifted with ghostly white stones that
stand up like fossils of a prehistoric life —­the
earth deposit which once covered them entirely washed
away, every particle of it removed by the greedy hordes,
leaving only this vast bleaching drift, literally
the “picked bones of the land.” At
one place stands Columbia, regarded once as a rival
to Sacramento, a possible State capital—­a
few tumbling shanties now—­and a ruined church.

It was the 4th of December, 1864, when Mark Twain
arrived at Jim Gillis’s cabin. He found
it a humble habitation made of logs and slabs, partly
sheltered by a great live-oak tree, surrounded by a
stretch of grass. It had not much in the way
of pretentious furniture, but there was a large fireplace,
and a library which included the standard authors.
A younger Gillis boy, William, was there at this time,
so that the family numbered five in all, including
Tom Quartz, the cat. On rainy days they would
gather about the big, open fire and Jim Gillis, with
his back to the warmth, would relate diverting yarns,
creations of his own, turned out hot from the anvil,
forged as he went along. He had a startling imagination,
and he had fostered it in that secluded place.
His stories usually consisted of wonderful adventures
of his companion, Dick Stoker, portrayed with humor
and that serene and vagrant fancy which builds as it
goes, careless as to whither it is proceeding and whether
the story shall end well or ill, soon or late, if
ever. He always pretended that these extravagant
tales of Stoker were strictly true; and Stoker—­“forty-six
and gray as a rat”—­earnest, thoughtful,
and tranquilly serene, would smoke and look into the
fire and listen to those astonishing things of himself,
smiling a little now and then but saying never a word.

Page 156

What did it matter to him? He had no world outside
of the cabin and the hills, no affairs; he would live
and die there; his affairs all had ended long ago.
A number of the stories used in Mark Twain’s
books were first told by Jim Gillis, standing with
his hands crossed behind him, back to the fire, in
the cabin on jackass Hill. The story of Dick Baker’s
cat was one of these; the jaybird and Acorn story
of ‘A Tramp Abroad’ was another; also
the story of the “Burning Shame,” and there
are others. Mark Twain had little to add to these
stories; in fact, he never could get them to sound
as well, he said, as when Jim Gillis had told them.

James Gillis’s imagination sometimes led him
into difficulties. Once a feeble old squaw came
along selling some fruit that looked like green plums.
Stoker, who knew the fruit well enough, carelessly
ventured the remark that it might be all right, but
he had never heard of anybody eating it, which set
Gillis off into eloquent praises of its delights,
all of which he knew to be purely imaginary; whereupon
Stoker told him if he liked the fruit so well, to
buy some of it. There was no escape after that;
Jim had to buy some of those plums, whose acid was
of the hair-lifting aqua-fortis variety, and all the
rest of the day he stewed them, adding sugar, trying
to make them palatable, tasting them now and then,
boasting meanwhile of their nectar-like deliciousness.
He gave the others a taste by and by—­a
withering, corroding sup—­and they derided
him and rode him down. But Jim never weakened.
He ate that fearful brew, and though for days his
mouth was like fire he still referred to the luscious
health-giving joys of the “Californian plums.”

Jackass Hill was not altogether a solitude; here and
there were neighbors. Another pocket-miner; named
Carrington, had a cabin not far away, and a mile or
two distant lived an old couple with a pair of pretty
daughters, so plump and trim and innocent, that they
were called the “Chapparal Quails.”
Young men from far and near paid court to them, and
on Sunday afternoons so many horses would be tied to
their front fence as to suggest an afternoon service
there. Young “Billy” Gillis knew them,
and one Sunday morning took his brother’s friend,
Sam Clemens, over for a call. They went early,
with forethought, and promptly took the girls for
a walk. They took a long walk, and went wandering
over the hills, toward Sandy Bar and the Stanislaus—­through
that reposeful land which Bret Harte would one day
light with idyllic romance—­and toward evening
found themselves a long way from home. They must
return by the nearest way to arrive before dark.
One of the young ladies suggested a short cut through
the Chemisal, and they started. But they were
lost, presently, and it was late, very late, when
at last they reached the ranch. The mother of
the “Quails” was sitting up for them, and
she had something to say. She let go a perfect
storm of general denunciation, then narrowed the attack
to Samuel Clemens as the oldest of the party.
He remained mildly serene.

Page 157

“No such thing. You know better. Mr.
Gillis has been here often. It was you.”

“But do you realize, ma’am, how tired
and hungry we are? Haven’t you got a bite
for us to eat?”

“No, sir, not a bite—­for such as
you.”

The offender’s eyes, wandering about the room,
spied something in a corner.

“Isn’t that a guitar over there?”
he asked.

“Yes, sir, it is; what of it?”

The culprit walked over, and taking it up, tuned the
strings a little and struck the chords. Then
he began to sing. He began very softly and sang
“Fly Away, Pretty Moth,” then “Araby’s
Daughter.” He could sing very well in those
days, following with the simpler chords. Perhaps
the mother “Quail” had known those songs
herself back in the States, for her manner grew kindlier,
almost with the first notes. When he had finished
she was the first to ask him to go on.

“I suppose you are just like all young folks,”
she said. “I was young myself once.
While you sing I’ll get some supper.”

She left the door to the kitchen open so that she
could hear, and cooked whatever she could find for
the belated party.

XLIX

THE JUMPING FROG

It was the rainy season, the winter of 1864 and 1865,
but there were many pleasant days, when they could
go pocket-hunting, and Samuel Clemens soon added a
knowledge of this fascinating science to his other
acquirements. Sometimes he worked with Dick Stoker,
sometimes with one of the Gillis boys. He did
not make his fortune at pocket-mining; he only laid
its corner-stone. In the old note-book he kept
of that sojourn we find that, with Jim Gillis, he
made a trip over into Calaveras County soon after
Christmas and remained there until after New Year’s,
probably prospecting; and he records that on New Year’s
night, at Vallecito, he saw a magnificent lunar rainbow
in a very light, drizzling rain. A lunax rainbow
is one of the things people seldom see. He thought
it an omen of good-fortune.

They returned to the cabin on the hill; but later
in the month, on the they crossed over into Calaveras
again, and began pocket-hunting not far from Angel’s
Camp. The note-book records that the bill of fare
at the Camp hotel consisted wholly of beans and something
which bore the name of coffee; also that the rains
were frequent and heavy.

January 27. Same old
diet—­same old weather—­went out
to the
pocket-claim—­had
to rush back.

Page 158

They had what they believed to be a good claim.
Jim Gillis declared the indications promising, and
if they could only have good weather to work it, they
were sure of rich returns. For himself, he would
have been willing to work, rain or shine. Clemens,
however, had different views on the subject.
His part was carrying water for washing out the pans
of dirt, and carrying pails of water through the cold
rain and mud was not very fascinating work. Dick
Stoker came over before long to help. Things
went a little better then; but most of their days were
spent in the bar-room of the dilapidated tavern at
Angel’s Camp, enjoying the company of a former
Illinois River pilot, Ben Coon,—­[This name
has been variously given as “Ros Coon,”
“Coon Drayton,” etc. It is given
here as set down in Mark Twain’s notes, made
on the spot. Coon was not (as has been stated)
the proprietor of the hotel (which was kept by a Frenchman),
but a frequenter of it.]—­a solemn, fat-witted
person, who dozed by the stove, or old slow, endless
stories, without point or application. Listeners
were a boon to him, for few came and not many would
stay. To Mark Twain and Jim Gillis, however,
Ben Coon was a delight. It was soothing and comfortable
to listen to his endless narratives, told in that
solemn way, with no suspicion of humor. Even when
his yarns had point, he did not recognize it.
One dreary afternoon, in his slow, monotonous fashion,
he told them about a frog—­a frog that had
belonged to a man named Coleman, who trained it to
jump, but that failed to win a wager because the owner
of a rival frog had surreptitiously loaded the trained
jumper with shot. The story had circulated among
the camps, and a well-known journalist, named Samuel
Seabough, had already made a squib of it, but neither
Clemens nor Gillis had ever happened to hear it before.
They thought the tale in itself amusing, and the “spectacle
of a man drifting serenely along through such a queer
yarn without ever smiling was exquisitely absurd.”
When Coon had talked himself out, his hearers played
billiards on the frowsy table, and now and then one
would remark to the other:

“I don’t see no p’ints about that
frog that’s any better’n any other frog,”
and perhaps the other would answer:

“I ain’t got no frog, but if I had a frog
I’d bet you.”

Out on the claim, between pails of water, Clemens,
as he watched Jim Gillis or Dick Stoker “washing,”
would be apt to say, “I don’t see no p’ints
about that pan o’ dirt that’s any better’n
any other pan o’ dirt,” and so they kept
it up.

Then the rain would come again and interfere with
their work. One afternoon, when Clemens and Gillis
were following certain tiny-sprayed specks of gold
that were leading them to pocket—­somewhere
up the long slope, the chill downpour set in.
Gillis, as usual, was washing, and Clemens carrying
water. The “color” was getting better
with every pan, and Jim Gillis believed that now,
after their long waiting, they were to be rewarded.
Possessed with the miner’s passion, he would
have gone on washing and climbing toward the precious
pocket, regardless of everything. Clemens, however,
shivering and disgusted, swore that each pail of water
was his last. His teeth were chattering and he
was wet through. Finally he said, in his deliberate
way:

Page 159

“Jim, I won’t carry any more water.
This work is too disagreeable.”

Gillis had just taken out a panful of dirt.

“Bring one more pail, Sam,” he pleaded.

“Oh, hell, Jim, I won’t do it; I’m
freezing!”

“Just one more pail, Sam,” he pleaded.

“No, sir, not a drop, not if I knew there were
a million dollars in that pan.”

Gillis tore a page out of his note-book, and hastily
posted a thirty-day claim notice by the pan of dirt,
and they set out for Angel’s Camp. It kept
on raining and storming, and they did not go back.
A few days later a letter from Steve Gillis made Clemens
decide to return to San Francisco. With Jim Gillis
and Dick Stoker he left Angel’s and walked across
the mountains to Jackass Hill in the snow-storm—­“the
first I ever saw in California,” he says in
his notes.

In the mean time the rain had washed away the top
of the pan of earth they had left standing on the
hillside, and exposed a handful of nuggets-pure gold.
Two strangers, Austrians, had come along and, observing
it, had sat down to wait until the thirty-day claim
notice posted by Jim Gillis should expire. They
did not mind the rain—­not with all that
gold in sight—­and the minute the thirty
days were up they followed the lead a few pans farther
and took out—­some say ten, some say twenty,
thousand dollars. In either case it was a good
pocket. Mark Twain missed it by one pail of water.
Still, it is just as well, perhaps, when one remembers
that vaster nugget of Angel’s Camp—­the
Jumping Frog. Jim Gillis always declared, “If
Sam had got that pocket he would have remained a pocket-miner
to the end of his days, like me.”

In Mark Twain’s old note-book occurs a memorandum
of the frog story—­a mere casual entry of
its main features:

Coleman with his jumping frog—­bet
stranger $50—­stranger had no
frog, and C. got him one:—­in
the mean time stranger filled C.’s
frog full of shot and he couldn’t
jump. The stranger’s frog won.

It seemed unimportant enough, no doubt, at the time;
but it was the nucleus around which was built a surpassing
fame. The hills along the Stanislaus have turned
out some wonderful nuggets in their time, but no other
of such size as that.

L

BACK TO THE TUMULT

From the note-book:

February 25. Arrived in Stockton
5 P.m. Home again home again at the Occidental
Hotel, San Francisco—­find letters from Artemus
Ward asking me to write a sketch for his new book
of Nevada Territory Travels which is soon to come
out. Too late—­ought to have got the
letters three months ago. They are dated early
in November.

He was sorry not to oblige Ward, sorry also not to
have representation in his book. He wrote explaining
the circumstance, and telling the story of his absence.
Steve Gillis, meantime, had returned to San Francisco,
and settled his difficulties there. The friends
again took up residence together.

Page 160

Mark Twain resumed his daily letters to the Enterprise,
without further annoyance from official sources.
Perhaps there was a temporary truce in that direction,
though he continued to attack various abuses—­civic,
private, and artistic—­becoming a sort of
general censor, establishing for himself the title
of the “Moralist of the Main.” The
letters were reprinted in San Francisco and widely
read. Now and then some one had the temerity
to answer them, but most of his victims maintained
a discreet silence. In one of these letters he
told of the Mexican oyster, a rather tough, unsatisfactory
article of diet, which could not stand criticism,
and presently disappeared from the market. It
was a mistake, however, for him to attack an Alta
journalist by the name of Evans. Evans was a
poet, and once composed an elegy with a refrain which
ended:

In the Enterprise letter following its publication
Mark Twain referred to this poem. He parodied
the refrain and added, “If there is any criticism
to make on it I should say there is a little too much
‘gone’ and not enough ‘forever.’”

It was a more or less pointless witticism, but it
had a humorous quotable flavor, and it made Evans
mad. In a squib in the Alta he retaliated:

Mark Twain has killed the Mexican oyster.
We only regret that the act was not inspired by
a worthier motive. Mark Twain’s sole reason
for attacking the Mexican oyster was because the
restaurant that sold them refused him credit.

A deadly thrust like that could not be parried in
print. To deny or recriminate would be to appear
ridiculous. One could only sweat and breathe
vengeance.

“Joe,” he said to Goodman, who had come
over for a visit, “my one object in life now
is to make enough money to stand trial and then go
and murder Evans.”

He wrote verses himself sometimes, and lightened his
Enterprise letters with jingles. One of these
concerned Tom Maguire, the autocrat manager of San
Francisco theaters. It details Maguire’s
assault on one of his actors.

Tom Maguire,
Roused to
ire,
Lighted
on McDougal;
Tore his
coat,
Clutched
his throat,
And split
him in the bugle.

For shame!
oh, fie!
Maguire,
why
Will you
thus skyugle?
Why curse
and swear,
And rip
and tear
The innocent
McDougal?

Of bones
bereft,
Almost,
you’ve left
Vestvali,
gentle Jew gal;
And now
you’ve smashed
And almost
hashed
The form
of poor McDougall

Page 161

Goodman remembers that Clemens and Gillis were together
again on California Street at this time, and of hearing
them sing, “The Doleful Ballad of the Rejected
Lover,” another of Mark Twain’s compositions.
It was a wild, blasphemous outburst, and the furious
fervor with which Mark and Steve delivered it, standing
side by side and waving their fists, did not render
it less objectionable. Such memories as these
are set down here, for they exhibit a phase of that
robust personality, built of the same primeval material
from which the world was created—­built of
every variety of material, in fact, ever incorporated
in a human being—­equally capable of writing
unprintable coarseness and that rarest and most tender
of all characterizations, the ‘Recollections
of Joan of arc’.

LI

THE CORNER-STONE

Along with his Enterprise work, Clemens continued
to write occasionally for the Californian, but for
some reason he did not offer the story of the jumping
frog. For one thing, he did not regard it highly
as literary material. He knew that he had enjoyed
it himself, but the humor and fashion of its telling
seemed to him of too simple and mild a variety in
that day of boisterous incident and exaggerated form.
By and by Artemus Ward turned up in San Francisco,
and one night Mark Twain told him his experiences
with Jim Gillis, and in Angel’s Camp; also of
Ben Coon and his tale of the Calaveras frog.
Ward was delighted.

“Write it,” he said. “There
is still time to get it into my volume of sketches.
Send it to Carleton, my publisher in New York.”—­[This
is in accordance with Mr. Clemens’s recollection
of the matter. The author can find no positive
evidence that Ward was on the Pacific coast again in
1865. It seems likely, therefore, that the telling
of the frog story and his approval of it were accomplished
by exchange of letters.]—­Clemens promised
to do this, but delayed fulfilment somewhat, and by
the time the sketch reached Carleton, Ward’s
book was about ready for the press. It did not
seem worth while to Carleton to make any change of
plans that would include the frog story. The
publisher handed it over to Henry Clapp, editor of
the Saturday Press, a perishing sheet, saying:
“Here, Clapp, here’s something you can
use in your paper.” Clapp took it thankfully
enough, we may believe.

“Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog”—­[This
was the original title.] —­appeared in the
Saturday Press of November 18, 1865, and was immediately
copied and quoted far and near. It brought the
name of Mark Twain across the mountains, bore it up
and down the Atlantic coast, and out over the prairies
of the Middle West. Away from the Pacific slope
only a reader here and there had known the name before.
Now every one who took a newspaper was treated to
the tale of the wonderful Calaveras frog, and received
a mental impress of the author’s signature.
The name Mark Twain became hardly an institution,
as yet, but it made a strong bid for national acceptance.

Page 162

As for its owner, he had no suspicion of these momentous
happenings for a considerable time. The telegraph
did not carry such news in those days, and it took
a good while for the echo of his victory to travel
to the Coast. When at last a lagging word of
it did arrive, it would seem to have brought disappointment,
rather than exaltation, to the author. Even Artemus
Ward’s opinion of the story had not increased
Mark Twain’s regard for it as literature.
That it had struck the popular note meant, as he believed,
failure for his more highly regarded work. In
a letter written January 20, 1866, he says these things
for himself:

I do not know what to write;
my life is so uneventful. I wish I was
back there piloting up and
down the river again. Verily, all is
vanity and little worth—­save
piloting.

To think that, after writing many an
article a man might be excused for thinking tolerably
good, those New York people should single out a
villainous backwoods sketch to compliment me on!
“Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog”—­a
squib which would never have been written but to
please Artemus Ward, and then it reached New York too
late to appear in his book.

But no matter. His book
was a wretchedly poor one, generally
speaking, and it could be
no credit to either of us to appear
between its covers.

This paragraph is from the New York correspondence
of the San Francisco Alta:

“Mark Twain’s story in the
Saturday Press of November 18th, called ‘Jim
Smiley and His Jumping Frog,’ has set all New
York in a roar, and he may be said to have made
his mark. I have been asked fifty times about
it and its author, and the papers are copying it far
and near. It is voted the best thing of the
day. Cannot the ‘Californian’
afford to keep Mark all to itself? It should not
let him scintillate so widely without first being
filtered through the California press.”

The New York publishing house
of Carleton & Co. gave the sketch to
the Saturday Press when they
found it was too late for the book.

It is difficult to judge the jumping Frog story to-day.
It has the intrinsic fundamental value of one of AEsop’s
Fables.—­[The resemblance of the frog story
to the early Greek tales must have been noted by Prof.
Henry Sidgwick, who synopsized it in Greek form and
phrase for his book, Greek Prose Composition.
Through this originated the impression that the story
was of Athenian root. Mark Twain himself was deceived,
until in 1899, when he met Professor Sidgwick, who
explained that the Greek version was the translation
and Mark Twain’s the original; that he had thought
it unnecessary to give credit for a story so well known.
See The Jumping Frog, Harper & Bros., 1903, p. 64.]—­It
contains a basic idea which is essentially ludicrous,
and the quaint simplicity of its telling is convincing
and full of charm. It appeared in print at a time

Page 163

when American humor was chaotic, the public taste
unformed. We had a vast appreciation for what
was comic, with no great number of opportunities for
showing it. We were so ready to laugh that when
a real opportunity came along we improved it and kept
on laughing and repeating the cause of our merriment,
directing the attention of our friends to it.
Whether the story of “Jim Smiley’s Frog,”
offered for the first time today, would capture the
public, and become the initial block of a towering
fame, is another matter. That the author himself
underrated it is certain. That the public, receiving
it at what we now term the psychological moment, may
have overrated it is by no means impossible. In
any case, it does not matter now. The stone rejected
by the builder was made the corner-stone of his literary
edifice. As such it is immortal.

In the letter already quoted, Clemens speaks of both
Bret Harte and himself as having quit the ‘Californian’
in future expecting to write for Eastern papers.
He adds:

Though I am generally placed at the
head of my breed of scribblers in this part of
the country, the place properly belongs to Bret Harte,
I think, though he denies it, along with the rest.
He wants me to club a lot of old sketches together
with a lot of his, and publish a book. I
wouldn’t do it, only he agrees to take all the
trouble. But I want to know whether we are
going to make anything out of it, first.
However, he has written to a New York publisher, and
if we are offered a bargain that will pay for a month’s
labor we will go to work and prepare the volume
for the press.

Nothing came of the proposed volume, or of other joint
literary schemes these two had then in mind.
Neither of them would seem to have been optimistic
as to their future place in American literature; certainly
in their most exalted moments they could hardly have
dreamed that within half a dozen years they would
be the head and front of a new school of letters—­the
two most talked-of men in America.

LII

A COMMISSION TO THE SANDWICH ISLANDS

Whatever his first emotions concerning the success
of “Jim Smiley’s Frog” may have
been, the sudden astonishing leap of that batrachian
into American literature gave the author an added
prestige at home as well as in distant parts.
Those about him were inclined to regard him, in some
degree at least, as a national literary figure and
to pay tribute accordingly. Special honors began
to be shown to him. A fine new steamer, the Ajax,
built for the Sandwich Island trade, carried on its
initial trip a select party of guests of which he was
invited to make one. He did not go, and reproached
himself sorrowfully afterward.

If the Ajax were back I would go quick, and throw
up my correspondence. She had fifty-two invited
guests aboard—­the cream of the town—­gentlemen
and ladies, and a splendid brass band. I could
not accept because there would be no one to write
my correspondence while I was gone.

Page 164

In fact, the daily letter had grown monotonous.
He was restless, and the Ajax excursion, which he
had been obliged to forego, made him still more dissatisfied.
An idea occurred to him: the sugar industry of
the islands was a matter of great commercial interest
to California, while the life and scenery there, picturesquely
treated, would appeal to the general reader.
He was on excellent terms with James Anthony and Paul
Morrill, of the Sacramento Union; he proposed to them
that they send him as their special correspondent
to report to their readers, in a series of letters,
life, trade, agriculture, and general aspect of the
islands. To his vast delight, they gave him the
commission. He wrote home joyously now:

I am to remain there a month and ransack the islands,
the cataracts and volcanoes completely, and write
twenty or thirty letters, for which they pay as much
money as I would get if I stayed at home.

He adds that on his return he expects to start straight
across the continent by way of the Columbia River,
the Pend Oreille Lakes, through Montana and down the
Missouri River. “Only two hundred miles
of land travel from San Francisco to New Orleans.”

So it is: man proposes, while fate, undisturbed,
spins serenely on.

He sailed by the Ajax on her next trip, March 7 (1866),
beginning his first sea voyage—­a brand-new
experience, during which he acquired the names of
the sails and parts of the ship, with considerable
knowledge of navigation, and of the islands he was
to visit—­whatever information passengers
and sailors could furnish. It was a happy, stormy
voyage altogether. In ‘Roughing It’
he has given us some account of it.

It was the 18th of March when he arrived at Honolulu,
and his first impression of that tranquil harbor remained
with him always. In fact, his whole visit there
became one of those memory-pictures, full of golden
sunlight and peace, to be found somewhere in every
human past.

The letters of introduction he had brought, and the
reputation which had preceded him, guaranteed him
welcome and hospitality. Officials and private
citizens were alike ready to show him their pleasant
land, and he fairly reveled in its delicious air,
its summer warmth, its soft repose.

Oh, islands there are on the
face of the deep
Where the leaves never fade
and the skies never weep,

he quotes in his note-book, and adds:

Went with Mr. Damon to his
cool, vine-shaded home; no careworn or
eager, anxious faces in this
land of happy contentment. God, what a
contrast with California and
the Washoe!

And in another place:

They live in the S. I.—­no
rush, no worry—­merchant goes down to his
store like a gentleman at
nine—­goes home at four and thinks no more
of business till next day.
D—­n San F. style of wearing out life.

Page 165

He fitted in with the languorous island existence,
but he had come for business, and he lost not much
time. He found there a number of friends from
Washoe, including the Rev. Mr. Rising, whose health
had failed from overwork. By their direction,
and under official guidance, he set out on Oahu, one
of the several curious horses he has immortalized in
print, and, accompanied by a pleasant party of ladies
and gentlemen, encircled the island of that name,
crossed it and recrossed it, visited its various battle-fields,
returning to Honolulu, lame, sore, sunburnt, but triumphant.
His letters home, better even than his Union correspondence,
reveal his personal interest and enthusiasms.

I have got a lot of human bones which
I took from one of these battle-fields. I
guess I will bring you some of them. I went with
the American Minister and took dinner this evening
with the King’s Grand Chamberlain, who is
related to the royal family, and though darker
than a mulatto he has an excellent English education,
and in manners is an accomplished gentleman.
He is to call for me in the morning; we will visit
the King in the palace, After dinner they called
in the “singing girls,” and we had some
beautiful music, sung in the native tongue.

It was his first association with royalty, and it
was human that he should air it a little. In
the same letter he states: “I will sail
in a day or two on a tour of the other islands, to
be gone two months.”

‘In Roughing It’ he has given us a picture
of his visits to the islands, their plantations, their
volcanoes, their natural and historic wonders.
He was an insatiable sight-seer then, and a persevering
one. The very name of a new point of interest
filled him with an eager enthusiasm to be off.
No discomfort or risk or distance discouraged him.
With a single daring companion—­a man who
said he could find the way—­he crossed the
burning floor of the mighty crater of Kilauea (then
in almost constant eruption), racing across the burning
lava floor, jumping wide and bottomless crevices,
when a misstep would have meant death.

By and by Marlette shouted “Stop!” I never
stopped quicker in my life. I asked what the
matter was. He said we were out of the path.
He said we must not try to go on until we found it
again, for we were surrounded with beds of rotten
lava, through which we could easily break and plunge
down 1,000 feet. I thought Boo would answer for
me, and was about to say so, when Marlette partly
proved his statement, crushing through and disappearing
to his arm-pits.

They made their way across at last, and stood the
rest of the night gazing down upon a spectacle of
a crater in quivering action, a veritable lake of
fire. They had risked their lives for that scene,
but it seemed worth while.

His open-air life on the river, and the mining camps,
had prepared Samuel Clemens for adventurous hardships.
He was thirty years old, with his full account of
mental and physical capital. His growth had been
slow, but he was entering now upon his golden age;
he was fitted for conquest of whatever sort, and he
was beginning to realize his power.

Page 166

LIII

ANSON BURLINGAME AND THE “HORNET” DISASTER

It was near the end of June when he returned to Honolulu
from a tour of all the islands, fairly worn out and
prostrated with saddle boils. He expected only
to rest and be quiet for a season, but all unknown
to him startling and historic things were taking place
in which he was to have a part—­events that
would mark another forward stride in his career.

The Ajax had just come in, bringing his Excellency
Anson Burlingame, then returning to his post as minister
to China; also General Van Valkenburg, minister to
Japan; Colonel Rumsey and Minister Burlingame’s
son, Edward, —­[Edward L. Burlingame, now
for many years editor of Scribner’s Magazine.]—­then
a lively boy of eighteen. Young Burlingame had
read “The Jumping Frog,” and was enthusiastic
about Mark Twain and his work. Learning that
he was in Honolulu, laid up at his hotel, the party
sent word that they would call on him next morning.

Clemens felt that he must not accept this honor, sick
or well. He crawled out of bed, dressed and shaved
himself as quickly as possible, and drove to the American
minister’s, where the party was staying.
They had a hilariously good time. When he returned
to his hotel he sent them, by request, whatever he
had on hand of his work. General Van Valkenburg
had said to him:

“California is proud of Mark Twain, and some
day the American people will be, too, no doubt.”

There has seldom been a more accurate prophecy.

But a still greater event was imminent. On that
very day (June 21, 1866) there came word of the arrival
at Sanpahoe, on the island of Hawaii, of an open boat
containing fifteen starving wretches, who on short,
ten-day rations had been buffeting a stormy sea for
forty-three days! A vessel, the Hornet, from
New York, had taken fire and burned “on the line,”
and since early in May, on that meager sustenance,
they had been battling with hundreds of leagues of
adverse billows, seeking for land.

A few days following the first report, eleven of the
rescued men were brought to Honolulu and placed in
the hospital. Mark Twain recognized the great
news importance of the event. It would be a splendid
beat if he could interview the castaways and be the
first to get their story to his paper. There
was no cable in those days; a vessel for San Francisco
would sail next morning. It was the opportunity
of a lifetime, and he must not miss it. Bedridden
as he was, the undertaking seemed beyond his strength.

But just at this time the Burlingame party descended
on him, and almost before he knew it he was on the
way to the hospital on a cot, escorted by the heads
of the joint legations of China and Japan. Once
there, Anson Burlingame, with his splendid human sympathy
and handsome, courtly presence, drew from those enfeebled
castaways all the story of their long privation and
struggle, that had stretched across forty-three distempered
days and four thousand miles of sea. All that
Mark Twain had to do was to listen and make the notes.

Page 167

He put in the night-writing against time. Next
morning, just as the vessel for the States was drifting
away from her dock, a strong hand flung his bulky
envelope of manuscript aboard, and if the vessel arrived
his great beat was sure. It did arrive, and the
three-column story on the front page of the Sacramento
Union, in its issue of July 19th, gave the public
the first detailed history of the terrible Hornet disaster
and the rescue of those starving men. Such a
story occupied a wider place in the public interest
than it would in these crowded days. The telegraph
carried it everywhere, and it was featured as a sensation.

Mark Twain always adored the name and memory of Anson
Burlingame. In his letter home he tells of Burlingame’s
magnanimity in “throwing away an invitation
to dine with princes and foreign dignitaries”
to help him. “You know I appreciate that
kind of thing,” he says; which was a true statement,
and in future years he never missed an opportunity
of paying an instalment on his debt of gratitude.
It was proper that he should do so, for the obligation
was a far greater one than that contracted in obtaining
the tale of the Hornet disaster. It was the debt
which one owes to a man who, from the deep measure
of his understanding, gives encouragement and exactly
needed and convincing advice. Anson Burlingame
said to Samuel Clemens:

“You have great ability; I believe you have
genius. What you need now is the refinement of
association. Seek companionship among men of superior
intellect and character. Refine yourself and your
work. Never affiliate with inferiors; always
climb.”

Clemens never forgot that advice. He did not
always observe it, but he rarely failed to realize
its gospel. Burlingame urged him to travel.

“Come to Pekin next winter,” he said,
“and visit me. Make my house your home.
I will give you letters and introduce you. You
will have facilities for acquiring information about
China.”

It is not surprising then that Mark Twain never felt
his debt to Anson Burlingame entirely paid. Burlingame
came more than once to the hotel, for Clemens was
really ill now, and they discussed plans for his future
betterment.

He promised, of course, to visit China, and when he
was alone put in a good deal of time planning a trip
around the world which would include the great capitals.
When not otherwise employed he read; though there
was only one book in the hotel, a “blue and gold”
edition of Dr. Holmes’s Songs in Many Keys,
and this he soon knew almost by heart, from title-page
to finis.

He was soon up and about. No one could remain
ill long in those happy islands. Young Burlingame
came, and suggested walks. Once, when Clemens
hesitated, the young man said:

Page 168

The command was regarded as sufficient. Clemens
quoted the witticism later (in his first lecture),
and it was often repeated in after-years, ascribed
to Warner, Ward, and a dozen others. Its origin
was as here set down.

Went to a ball 8.30 P.M.—­danced
till 12.30; stopped at General Van
Valkenburg’s room and
talked with him and Mr. Burlingame and Ed
Burlingame until 3 A.M.

From which we may conclude that he had altogether
recovered. A few days later the legation party
had sailed for China and Japan, and on the 19th Clemens
himself set out by a slow sailing-vessel to San Francisco.
They were becalmed and were twenty-five days making
the voyage. Captain Mitchell and others of the
wrecked Hornet were aboard, and he put in a good deal
of time copying their diaries and preparing a magazine
article which, he believed, would prove his real entrance
to the literary world.

The vessel lay almost perfectly still, day after day,
and became a regular playground at sea. Sundays
they had services and Mark Twain led the choir.

“I hope they will have a better opinion of our
music in heaven than I have down here,” he says
in his notes. “If they don’t, a thunderbolt
will knock this vessel endways.” It is perhaps
worthy of mention that on the night of the 27th of
July he records having seen another “splendidly
colored, lunar rainbow.” That he regarded
this as an indication of future good-fortune is not
surprising, considering the events of the previous
year.

It was August 13th when he reached San Francisco,
and the note-book entry of that day says:

Home again. No—­not home
again—­in prison again, end all the wild
sense of freedom gone. The city seems so cramped
and so dreary with toil and care and business
anxiety. God help me, I wish I were at sea
again!

There were compensations, however. He went over
to Sacramento, and was abundantly welcomed. It
was agreed that, in addition to the twenty dollars
allowed for each letter, a special bill should be made
for the Hornet report.

There was a general laugh. The bill was made
out at that figure, and he took it to the business
office for payment.

“The cashier didn’t faint,” he wrote,
many years later, “but he came rather near it.
He sent for the proprietors, and they only laughed
in their jolly fashion, and said it was a robbery,
but ’no matter, pay it. It’s all
right.’ The best men that ever owned a newspaper.”—­["My
Debut as a Literary Person.”—­Collected
works.]—­Though inferior to the descriptive
writing which a year later would give him a world-wide
fame, the Sandwich Island letters added greatly to

Page 169

his prestige on the Pacific coast. They were
convincing, informing; tersely—­even eloquently—­descriptive,
with a vein of humor adapted to their audience.
Yet to read them now, in the fine nonpareil type in
which they were set, is such a wearying task that
one can only marvel at their popularity. They
were not brilliant literature, by our standards to-day.
Their humor is usually of a muscular kind, varied
with grotesque exaggerations; the literary quality
is pretty attenuated. Here and there are attempts
at verse. He had a fashion in those days of combining
two or more poems with distracting, sometimes amusing,
effect. Examples of these dislocations occur
in the Union letters; a single stanza will present
the general idea:

The Assyrian came down like
a wolf on the fold,

The turf with their bayonets
turning,
And his cohorts were gleaming
with purple and gold,
And our lanterns dimly burning.

Only a trifling portion of the letters found their
way into his Sandwich Island chapters of ‘Roughing
It’, five years later. They do, however,
reveal a sort of transition stage between the riotous
florescence of the Comstock and the mellowness of
his later style. He was learning to see things
with better eyes, from a better point of view.
It is not difficult to believe that this literary
change of heart was in no small measure due to the
influence of Anson Burlingame.

MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY

By Albert Bigelow Paine

VOLUME I, Part 2: 1866-1875

LIV

THE LECTURER

It was not easy to take up the daily struggle again,
but it was necessary.—­[Clemens once declared
he had been so blue at this period that one morning
he put a loaded pistol to his head, but found he lacked
courage to pull the trigger.]—­Out of the
ruck of possibilities (his brain always thronged with
plans) he constructed three or four resolves.
The chief of these was the trip around the world; but
that lay months ahead, and in the mean time ways and
means must be provided. Another intention was
to finish the Hornet article, and forward it to Harper’s
Magazine—­a purpose carried immediately into
effect. To his delight the article found acceptance,
and he looked forward to the day of its publication
as the beginning of a real career. He intended
to follow it up with a series on the islands, which
in due time might result in a book and an income.
He had gone so far as to experiment with a dedication
for the book—­an inscription to his mother,
modified later for use in ’The Innocents Abroad’.
A third plan of action was to take advantage of the
popularity of the Hawaiian letters, and deliver a lecture
on the same subject. But this was a fearsome
prospect—­he trembled when he thought of
it. As Governor of the Third House he had been

Page 170

extravagantly received and applauded, but in that
case the position of public entertainer had been thrust
upon him. To come forward now, offering himself
in the same capacity, was a different matter.
He believed he could entertain, but he lacked the
courage to declare himself; besides, it meant a risk
of his slender capital. He confided his situation
to Col. John McComb, of the Alta California,
and was startled by McComb’s vigorous endorsement.

“Do it, by all means!” urged McComb.
“It will be a grand success—­I know
it! Take the largest house in town, and charge
a dollar a ticket.”

Frightened but resolute, he went to the leading theater
manager the same Tom Maguire of his verses—­and
was offered the new opera-house at half rates.
The next day this advertisement appeared:

In which passing mention will be made
of Harris, Bishop Staley, the American missionaries,
etc., and the absurd customs and characteristics
of the natives duly discussed and described.
The great volcano of
Kilauea will also receive proper attention.

A splendidorchestra
is in town, but has not been engagedalso
A denofferociouswildbeasts
will be on exhibition in the next blockmagnificentfireworks
were in contemplation for this occasion, but the idea
has been abandoned
A grandTorchlightprocession
may be expected; in fact, the public are privileged
to expect whatever
they please.

Dress Circle, $1.00 Family
Circle, 50c
Doors open at 7 o’clock The Trouble to
begin at 8 o’clock

The story of that first lecture, as told in Roughing
It, is a faithful one, and need only be summarized
here.

Expecting to find the house empty, he found it packed
from the footlights to the walls. Sidling out
from the wings—­wobbly-kneed and dry of
tongue—­he was greeted by a murmur, a roar,
a very crash of applause that frightened away his
remaining vestiges of courage. Then, came reaction
—­these were his friends, and he began to
talk to them. Fear melted away, and as tide after
tide of applause rose and billowed and came breaking
at his feet, he knew something of the exaltation of
Monte Cristo when he declared “The world is
mine!”

It was a vast satisfaction to have succeeded.
It was particularly gratifying at this time, for he
dreaded going back into newspaper harness. Also;
it softened later the disappointment resulting from
another venture; for when the December Harper appeared,
with his article, the printer and proof-reader had
somehow converted Mark Twain into “Mark Swain,”
and his literary dream perished.

Page 171

As to the literary value of his lecture, it was much
higher than had, been any portion of his letters,
if we may judge from its few remaining fragments.
One of these—­a part of the description of
the great volcano Haleakala, on the island of Maui—­is
a fair example of his eloquence.

It is somewhat more florid than his later description
of the same scene in Roughing It, which it otherwise
resembles; and we may imagine that its poetry, with
the added charm of its delivery, held breathless his
hearers, many of whom believed that no purer eloquence
had ever been uttered or written.

It is worth remembering, too, that in this lecture,
delivered so long ago, he advocated the idea of American
ownership of these islands, dwelling at considerable
length on his reasons for this ideal.

—­[For fragmentary extracts from this first
lecture of Mark Twain and news comment, see Appendix
D, end of last volume.]—­There was a gross
return from his venture of more than $1,200, but with
his usual business insight, which was never foresight,
he had made an arrangement by which, after paying
bills and dividing with his manager, he had only about
one-third of, this sum left. Still, even this
was prosperity and triumph. He had acquired a
new and lucrative profession at a bound. The
papers lauded him as the “most piquant and humorous
writer and lecturer on the Coast since the days of
the lamented John Phoenix.” He felt that
he was on the highroad at last.

Denis McCarthy, late of the Enterprise, was in San
Francisco, and was willing to become his manager.
Denis was capable and honest, and Clemens was fond
of him. They planned a tour of the near-by towns,
beginning with Sacramento, extending it later even
to the mining camps, such as Red Dog and Grass Valley;
also across into Nevada, with engagements at Carson
City, Virginia, and Gold Hill. It was an exultant
and hilarious excursion—­that first lecture
tour made by Denis McCarthy and Mark Twain. Success
traveled with them everywhere, whether the lecturer
looked across the footlights of some pretentious “opera-house”
or between the two tallow candles of some camp “academy.”
Whatever the building, it was packed, and the returns
were maximum.

Those who remember him as a lecturer in that long-ago
time say that his delivery was more quaint, his drawl
more exaggerated, even than in later life; that his
appearance and movements on the stage were natural,
rather than graceful; that his manuscript, which he
carried under his arm, looked like a ruffled hen.
It was, in fact, originally written on sheets of manila
paper, in large characters, so that it could be read
easily by dim light, and it was doubtless often disordered.

There was plenty of amusing experience on this tour.
At one place, when the lecture was over, an old man
came to him and said:

“Be them your natural tones of eloquence?”

At Grass Valley there was a rival show, consisting
of a lady tight-rope walker and her husband.
It was a small place, and the tight-rope attraction
seemed likely to fail. The lady’s husband
had formerly been a compositor on the Enterprise,
so that he felt there was a bond of brotherhood between
him and Mark Twain.

Page 172

Following custom, the lecturer at first thought it
necessary to be introduced, and at each place McCarthy
had to skirmish around and find the proper person.
At Red Dog, on the Stanislaus, the man selected failed
to appear, and Denis had to provide another on short
notice. He went down into the audience and captured
an old fellow, who ducked and dodged but could not
escape. Denis led him to the stage, a good deal
frightened.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “this
is the celebrated Mark Twain from the celebrated city
of San Francisco, with his celebrated lecture about
the celebrated Sandwich Islands.”

That was as far as he could go; but it was far enough.
Mark Twain never had a better introduction. The
audience was in a shouting humor from the start.

Clemens himself used to tell of an introduction at
another camp, where his sponsor said:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I know only two things
about this man: the first is that he’s
never been in jail, and the second is I don’t
know why.”

But this is probably apocryphal; there is too much
“Mark Twain” in it.

When he reached Virginia, Goodman said to him:

“Sam, you do not need anybody to introduce you.
There’s a piano on the stage in the theater.
Have it brought out in sight, and when the curtain
rises you be seated at the piano, playing and singing
that song of yours, ‘I Had an Old Horse Whose
Name Was Methusalem,’ and don’t seem to
notice that the curtain is up at first; then be surprised
when you suddenly find out that it is up, and begin
talking, without any further preliminaries.”

This proved good advice, and the lecture, thus opened,
started off with general hilarity and applause.

LV

HIGHWAY ROBBERY

His Nevada, lectures were bound to be immensely successful.
The people regarded him as their property over there,
and at Carson and Virginia the houses overflowed.
At Virginia especially his friends urged and begged
him to repeat the entertainment, but he resolutely
declined.

“I have only one lecture yet,” he said.
“I cannot bring myself to give it twice in the
same town.”

But that irresponsible imp, Steve Gillis, who was
again in Virginia, conceived a plan which would make
it not only necessary for him to lecture again, but
would supply him with a subject. Steve’s
plan was very simple: it was to relieve the lecturer
of his funds by a friendly highway robbery, and let
an account of the adventure furnish the new lecture.

In ‘Roughing It’ Mark Twain has given
a version of this mock robbery which is correct enough
as far as it goes; but important details are lacking.
Only a few years ago (it was April, 1907), in his cabin
on jackass Hill, with Joseph Goodman and the writer
of this history present, Steve Gillis made his “death-bed”
confession as is here set down:

Page 173

“Mark’s lecture was given in Piper’s
Opera House, October 30, 1866. The Virginia City
people had heard many famous lectures before, but they
were mere sideshows compared with Mark’s.
It could have been run to crowded houses for a week.
We begged him to give the common people a chance; but
he refused to repeat himself. He was going down
to Carson, and was coming back to talk in Gold Hill
about a week later, and his agent, Denis McCarthy,
and I laid a plan to have him robbed on the Divide
between Gold Hill and Virginia, after the Gold Hill
lecture was over and he and Denis would be coming
home with the money. The Divide was a good lonely
place, and was famous for its hold-ups. We got
City Marshal George Birdsall into it with us, and
took in Leslie Blackburn, Pat Holland, Jimmy Eddington,
and one or two more of Sam’s old friends.
We all loved him, and would have fought for him in
a moment. That’s the kind of friends Mark
had in Nevada. If he had any enemies I never heard
of them.

“We didn’t take in Dan de Quille, or Joe
here, because Sam was Joe’s guest, and we were
afraid he would tell him. We didn’t take
in Dan because we wanted him to write it up as a genuine
robbery and make a big sensation. That would
pack the opera-house at two dollars a seat to hear
Mark tell the story.

“Well, everything went off pretty well.
About the time Mark was finishing his lecture in Gold
Hill the robbers all went up on the Divide to wait,
but Mark’s audience gave him a kind of reception
after his lecture, and we nearly froze to death up
there before he came along. By and by I went
back to see what was the matter. Sam and Denis
were coming, and carrying a carpet-sack about half
full of silver between them. I shadowed them
and blew a policeman’s whistle as a signal to
the boys when the lecturers were within about a hundred
yards of the place. I heard Sam say to Denis:

“’I’m glad they’ve got a policeman
on the Divide. They never had one in my day.’

“Just about that time the boys, all with black
masks on and silver dollars at the sides of their
tongues to disguise their voices, stepped out and
stuck six-shooters at Sam and Denis and told them to
put up their hands. The robbers called each other
‘Beauregard’ and ’Stonewall Jackson.’
Of course Denis’s hands went up, and Mark’s,
too, though Mark wasn’t a bit scared or excited.
He talked to the robbers in his regular fashion.
He said:

“’Don’t flourish those pistols so
promiscuously. They might go off by accident.’

“They told him to hand over his watch and money;
but when he started to take his hands down they made
him put them up again. Then he asked how they
expected him to give them his valuables with his hands
up in the sky. He said his treasures didn’t
lie in heaven. He told them not to take his watch,
which was the one Sandy Baldwin and Theodore Winters
had given him as Governor of the Third House, but
we took it all the same.

Page 174

“Whenever he started to put his hands down we
made him put them up again. Once he said:

“‘Don’t you fellows be so rough.
I was tenderly reared.’

“Then we told him and Denis to keep their hands
up for fifteen minutes after we were gone—­this
was to give us time to get back to Virginia and be
settled when they came along. As we were going
away Mark called:

“‘Say, you forgot something.’

“‘What is it?’

“Why, the carpet-bag.’

“He was cool all the time. Senator Bill
Stewart, in his Autobiography, tells a great story
of how scared Mark was, and how he ran; but Stewart
was three thousand miles from Virginia by that time,
and later got mad at Mark because he made a joke about
him in ‘Roughing It’.

“Denis wanted to take his hands down pretty
soon after we were gone, but Mark said:

“’No, Denis, I’m used to obeying
orders when they are given in that convincing way;
we’ll just keep our hands up another fifteen
minutes or so for good measure.’

“We were waiting in a big saloon on C Street
when Mark and Denis came along. We knew they
would come in, and we expected Mark would be excited;
but he was as unruffled as a mountain lake. He
told us they had been robbed, and asked me if I had
any money. I gave him a hundred dollars of his
own money, and he ordered refreshments for everybody.
Then we adjourned to the Enterprise office, where
he offered a reward, and Dan de Quille wrote up the
story and telegraphed it to the other newspapers.
Then somebody suggested that Mark would have to give
another lecture now, and that the robbery would make
a great subject. He entered right into the thing,
and next day we engaged Piper’s Opera House,
and people were offering five dollars apiece for front
seats. It would have been the biggest thing that
ever came to Virginia if it had come off. But
we made a mistake, then, by taking Sandy Baldwin into
the joke. We took in Joe here, too, and gave
him the watch and money to keep, which made it hard
for Joe afterward. But it was Sandy Baldwin that
ruined us. He had Mark out to dinner the night
before the show was to come off, and after he got
well warmed up with champagne he thought it would be
a smart thing to let Mark into what was really going
on.

“Mark didn’t see it our way. He was
mad clear through.”

At this point Joseph Goodman took up the story.
He said:

“Those devils put Sam’s money, watch,
keys, pencils, and all his things into my hands.
I felt particularly mean at being made accessory to
the crime, especially as Sam was my guest, and I had
grave doubts as to how he would take it when he found
out the robbery was not genuine.

“I felt terribly guilty when he said:

“’Joe, those d—­n thieves took
my keys, and I can’t get into my trunk.
Do you suppose you could get me a key that would fit
my trunk?’

Page 175

“I said I thought I could during the day, and
after Sam had gone I took his own key, put it in the
fire and burnt it to make it look black. Then
I took a file and scratched it here and there, to make
it look as if I had been fitting it to the lock, feeling
guilty all the time, like a man who is trying to hide
a murder. Sam did not ask for his key that day,
and that evening he was invited to judge Baldwin’s
to dinner. I thought he looked pretty silent
and solemn when he came home; but he only said:

“‘Joe, let’s play cards; I don’t
feel sleepy.’

“Steve here, and two or three of the other boys
who had been active in the robbery, were present,
and they did not like Sam’s manner, so they
excused themselves and left him alone with me.
We played a good while; then he said:

“’Joe, these cards are greasy. I
have got some new ones in my trunk. Did you get
that key to-day?’

“I fished out that burnt, scratched-up key with
fear and trembling. But he didn’t seem
to notice it at all, and presently returned with the
cards. Then we played, and played, and played—­till
one o’clock—­two o’clock—­Sam
hardly saying a word, and I wondering what was going
to happen. By and by he laid down his cards and
looked at me, and said:

“’Joe, Sandy Baldwin told me all about
that robbery to-night. Now, Joe, I have found
out that the law doesn’t recognize a joke, and
I am going to send every one of those fellows to the
penitentiary.’

“He said it with such solemn gravity, and such
vindictiveness, that I believed he was in dead earnest.

“I know that I put in two hours of the hardest
work I ever did, trying to talk him out of that resolution.
I used all the arguments about the boys being his
oldest friends; how they all loved him, and how the
joke had been entirely for his own good; I pleaded
with him, begged him to reconsider; I went and got
his money and his watch and laid them on the table;
but for a time it seemed hopeless. And I could
imagine those fellows going behind the bars, and the
sensation it would make in California; and just as
I was about to give it up he said:

“’Well, Joe, I’ll let it pass—­this
time; I’ll forgive them again; I’ve had
to do it so many times; but if I should see Denis McCarthy
and Steve Gillis mounting the scaffold to-morrow,
and I could save them by turning over my hand, I wouldn’t
do it!’

“He canceled the lecture engagement, however,
next morning, and the day after left on the Pioneer
Stage, by the way of Donner Lake, for California.
The boys came rather sheepishly to see him off; but
he would make no show of relenting. When they
introduced themselves as Beauregard, Stonewall Jackson,
etc., he merely said:

“’Yes, and you’ll all be behind
the bars some day. There’s been a good
deal of robbery around here lately, and it’s
pretty clear now who did it.’ They handed
him a package containing the masks which the robbers
had worn. He received it in gloomy silence; but
as the stage drove away he put his head out of the
window, and after some pretty vigorous admonition
resumed his old smile, and called out: ’Good-by,
friends; good-by, thieves; I bear you no malice.’
So the heaviest joke was on his tormentors after all.”

Page 176

This is the story of the famous Mark Twain robbery
direct from headquarters. It has been garbled
in so many ways that it seems worth setting down in
full. Denis McCarthy, who joined him presently
in San Francisco, received a little more punishment
there.

“What kind of a trip did you boys have?”
a friend asked of them.

Clemens, just recovering from a cold which the exposure
on the Divide had given him, smiled grimly:

“Oh, pretty good, only Denis here mistook it
for a spree.”

He lectured again in San Francisco, this time telling
the story of his Overland trip in 1861, and he did
the daring thing of repeating three times the worn-out
story of Horace Greeley’s ride with Hank Monk,
as given later in ‘Roughing It’.
People were deadly tired of that story out there,
and when he told it the first time, with great seriousness,
they thought he must be failing mentally. They
did not laugh—­they only felt sorry.
He waited a little, as if expecting a laugh, and presently
led around to it and told it again. The audience
was astonished still more, and pitied him thoroughly.
He seemed to be waiting pathetically in the dead silence
for their applause, then went on with his lecture;
but presently, with labored effort, struggled around
to the old story again, and told it for the third
time. The audience suddenly saw the joke then,
and became vociferous and hysterical in their applause;
but it was a narrow escape. He would have been
hysterical himself if the relief had not came when
it did.

—­[A side-light on the Horace Greeley story
and on Mr. Greeley’s eccentricities is furnished
by Mr. Goodman:

When I was going East in 1869 I happened to see Hank
Monk just before I started. “Mr. Goodman,”
he said, “you tell Horace Greeley that I want
to come East, and ask him to send me a pass.”
“All right, Hank,” I said, “I will.”
It happened that when I got to New York City one of
the first men I met was Greeley. “Mr. Greeley,”
said, “I have a message for you from Hank Monk.”
Greeley bristled and glared at me. “That—­rascal?”
he said, “He has done me more injury than any
other man in America.”]

LVI

BACK TO THE STATES

In the mean time Clemens had completed his plan for
sailing, and had arranged with General McComb, of
the Alta California, for letters during his proposed
trip around the world. However, he meant to visit
his people first, and his old home. He could
go back with means now, and with the prestige of success.

“I sail to-morrow per Opposition—­telegraphed
you to-day,” he wrote on December 14th, and
a day later his note-book entry says:

Page 177

So he was really going home at last! He had been
gone five and a half years—­eventful, adventurous
years that had made him over completely, at least
so far as ambitions and equipment were concerned.
He had came away, in his early manhood, a printer
and a pilot, unknown outside of his class. He
was returning a man of thirty-one, with a fund of hard
experience, three added professions—­mining,
journalism, and lecturing —­also with a
new name, already famous on the sunset slopes of its
adoption, and beginning to be heard over the hills
and far away. In some degree, at least, he resembled
the prince of a fairy tale who, starting out humble
and unnoticed, wins his way through a hundred adventures
and returns with gifts and honors.

The homeward voyage was a notable one. It began
with a tempest a little way out of San Francisco—­a
storm terrible but brief, that brought the passengers
from their berths to the deck, and for a time set them
praying. Then there was Captain Ned Wakeman, a
big, burly, fearless sailor, who had visited the edges
of all continents and archipelagos; who had been born
at sea, and never had a day’s schooling in his
life, but knew the Bible by heart; who was full of
human nature and profanity, and believed he was the
only man on the globe who knew the secret of the Bible
miracles. He became a distinct personality in
Mark Twain’s work —­the memory of
him was an unfailing delight. Captain “Ned
Blakely,” in ‘Roughing It’, who
with his own hands hanged Bill Noakes, after reading
him promiscuous chapters from the Bible, was Captain
Wakeman. Captain “Stormfield,” who
had the marvelous visit to heaven, was likewise Captain
Wakeman; and he appears in the “Idle Excursion”
and elsewhere.

Another event of the voyage was crossing the Nicaragua
Isthmus—­the trip across the lake and down
the San Juan River—­a, brand-new experience,
between shores of splendid tropic tangle, gleaming
with vivid life. The luxuriance got into his
note-book.

Dark grottos, fairy festoons, tunnels, temples, columns,
pillars, towers, pilasters, terraces, pyramids, mounds,
domes, walls, in endless confusion of vine-work—­no
shape known to architecture unimitated—­and
all so webbed together that short distances within
are only gained by glimpses. Monkeys here and
there; birds warbling; gorgeous plumaged birds on the
wing; Paradise itself, the imperial realm of beauty-nothing
to wish for to make it perfect.

But it was beyond the isthmus that the voyage loomed
into proportions somber and terrible. The vessel
they took there, the San Francisco, sailed from Greytown
January 1, 1867, the beginning of a memorable year
in Mark Twain’s life. Next day two cases
of Asiatic cholera were reported in the steerage.
There had been a rumor of it in Nicaragua, but no
one expected it on the ship.

Page 178

The nature of the disease was not hinted at until
evening, when one of the men died. Soon after
midnight, the other followed. A minister making
the voyage home, Rev. J. G. Fackler, read the burial
service. The gaiety of the passengers, who had
become well acquainted during the Pacific voyage,
was subdued. When the word “cholera”
went among them, faces grew grave and frightened.
On the morning of January 4th Reverend Fackler’s
services were again required. The dead man was
put overboard within half an hour after he had ceased
to breathe.

Gloom settled upon the ship. All steam was made
to put into Key West. Then some of the machinery
gave way and the ship lay rolling, helplessly becalmed
in the fierce heat of the Gulf, while repairs were
being made. The work was done at a disadvantage,
and the parts did not hold. Time and again they
were obliged to lie to, in the deadly tropic heat,
listening to the hopeless hammering, wondering who
would be the next to be sewed up hastily in a blanket
and slipped over the ship’s side. On the
5th seven new cases of illness were reported.
One of the crew, a man called “Shape,”
was said to be dying. A few hours later he was
dead. By this time the Reverend Fackler himself
had been taken.

“So they are burying poor ‘Shape’
without benefit of clergy,” says the note-book.

General consternation now began to prevail. Then
it was learned that the ship’s doctor had run
out of medicines. The passengers became demoralized.
They believed their vessel was to become a charnel
ship. Strict sanitary orders were issued, and
a hospital was improvised.

Verily the ship is becoming a floating
hospital herself—­not an hour passes
but brings its fresh sensation, its new disaster, its
melancholy tidings. When I think of poor “Shape”
and the preacher, both so well when I saw them
yesterday evening, I realize that I myself may
be dead to-morrow.

Since the last two hours all
laughter, all levity, has ceased on the
ship—­a settled
gloom is upon the faces of the passengers.

By noon it was evident that the minister could not
survive. He died at two o’clock next morning;
the fifth victim in less than five days. The
machinery continued to break and the vessel to drag.
The ship’s doctor confessed to Clemens that
he was helpless. There were eight patients in
the hospital.

But on January 6th they managed to make Key West,
and for some reason were not quarantined. Twenty-one
passengers immediately deserted the ship and were
heard of no more.

“I am glad they are gone. D—­n
them,” says the notebook. Apparently he
had never considered leaving, and a number of others
remained. The doctor restocked his medicine-locker,
and the next day they put to sea again. Certainly
they were a daring lot of voyagers. On the 8th
another of the patients died. Then the cooler
weather seemed to check the contagion, and it was
not until the night of the 11th, when the New York
harbor lights were in view, that the final death occurred.
There were no new cases by this time, and the other
patients were convalescent. A certificate was
made out that the last man had died of “dropsy.”
There would seem to have been no serious difficulty
in docking the vessel and landing the passengers.
The matter would probably be handled differently to-day.

Page 179

LVII

OLD FRIENDS AND NEW PLANS

It had been more than thirteen years since his first
arrival in New York. Then he had been a youth,
green, untraveled, eager to get away from home.
Now a veteran, he was as eager to return.

He stopped only long enough in New York to see Charles
Henry Webb, late of California, who had put together
a number of the Mark Twain sketches, including “The
Jumping Frog,” for book publication. Clemens
himself decided to take the book to Carleton, thinking
that, having missed the fame of the “Frog”
once, he might welcome a chance to stand sponsor for
it now. But Carleton was wary; the “Frog”
had won favor, and even fame, in its fugitive, vagrant
way, but a book was another matter. Books were
undertaken very seriously and with plenty of consideration
in those days. Twenty-one years later, in Switzerland,
Carleton said to Mark Twain:

“My chief claim to immortality is the distinction
of having declined your first book.”

Clemens was ready enough to give up the book when
Carleton declined it, but Webb said he would publish
it himself, and he set about it forthwith. The
author waited no longer now, but started for St. Louis,
and was soon with his mother and sister, whom he had
not seen since that eventful first year of the war.
They thought he looked old, which was true enough,
but they found him unchanged in his manner: buoyant,
full of banter and gravely quaint remarks—­he
was always the same. Jane Clemens had grown older,
too. She was nearly sixty-four, but as keen and
vigorous as ever-proud (even if somewhat critical)
of this handsome, brilliant man of new name and fame
who had been her mischievous, wayward boy. She
petted him, joked with him, scolded him, and inquired
searchingly into his morals and habits. In turn
he petted, comforted, and teased her. She decided
that he was the same Sam, and always would be—­a
true prophecy.

He went up to Hannibal to see old friends. Many
were married; some had moved away; some were dead—­the
old story. He delivered his lecture there, and
was the center of interest and admiration—­his
welcome might have satisfied even Tom Sawyer.
From Hannibal he journeyed to Keokuk, where he lectured
again to a crowd of old friends and new, then returned
to St. Louis for a more extended visit.

It was while he was in St. Louis that he first saw
the announcement of the Quaker City Holy Land Excursion,
and was promptly fascinated by what was then a brand-new
idea in ocean travel—­a splendid picnic—­a
choice and refined party that would sail away for
a long summer’s journeying to the most romantic
of all lands and seas, the shores of the Mediterranean.
No such argosy had ever set out before in pursuit of
the golden fleece of happiness.

His projected trip around the world lost its charm
in the light of this idyllic dream. Henry Ward
Beecher was advertised as one of the party; General
Sherman as another; also ministers, high-class journalists—­the
best minds of the nation. Anson Burlingame had
told him to associate with persons of refinement and
intellect. He lost no time in writing to the
Alta, proposing that they send him in this select company.

Page 180

Noah Brooks, who was then on the Alta, states—­[In
an article published in the Century Magazine.]—­that
the management was staggered by the proposition, but
that Col. John McComb insisted that the investment
in Mark Twain would be sound. A letter was accordingly
sent, stating that a check for his passage would be
forwarded in due season, and that meantime he could
contribute letters from New York City. The rate
for all letters was to be twenty dollars each.
The arrangement was a godsend, in the fullest sense
of the word, to Mark Twain.

It was now April, and he was eager to get back to
New York to arrange his passage. The Quaker City
would not sail for two months yet (two eventful months),
but the advertisement said that passages must be secured
by the 5th, and he was there on that day. Almost
the first man he met was the chief of the New York
Alta bureau with a check for twelve hundred and fifty
dollars (the amount of his ticket) and a telegram saying,
“Ship Mark Twain in the Holy Land Excursion
and pay his passage.”

—­[The following
letter, which bears no date, was probably handed to
him later in the New York
Alta office as a sort of credential:

AltaCaliforniaoffice, 42 Johnstreet, newYork.

Sam’l Clemens, Esq.,
New York.

Dearsir,—­I have
the honor to inform you that Fred’k. MacCrellish
& Co., Proprietors of Alta California, San Francisco,
Cal., desire to engage your services as Special
Correspondent on the pleasure excursion now about
to proceed from this City to the Holy Land. In
obedience to their instructions I have secured
a passage for you on the vessel about to convey
the excursion party referred to, and made such
arrangements as I hope will secure your comfort and
convenience. Your only instructions are that
you will continue to write at such times and from
such places as you deem proper, and in the same
style that heretofore secured you the favor of the
readers of the Alta California. I have the
honor to remain, with high respect and esteem,

Your ob’dt. Servant,

John J. Murphy.]

The Alta, it appears, had already applied for his
berth; but, not having been vouched for by Mr. Beecher
or some other eminent divine, Clemens was fearful
he might not be accepted. Quite casually he was
enlightened on this point. While waiting for
attention in the shipping-office, with the Alta agent,
he heard a newspaper man inquire what notables were
going. A clerk, with evident pride, rattled off
the names:

So he was billed as an attraction. It was his
first surreptitious taste of fame on the Atlantic
coast, and not without its delight. The story
often told of his being introduced by Ned House, of
the Tribune, as a minister, though often repeated
by Mark Twain himself, was in the nature of a joke,
and mainly apocryphal. Clemens was a good deal
in House’s company at the time, for he had made
an arrangement to contribute occasional letters to
the Tribune, and House no doubt introduced him jokingly
as one of the Quaker City ministers.

Page 181

LVIII

A NEW BOOK AND A LECTURE

Webb, meantime, had pushed the Frog book along.
The proofs had been read and the volume was about
ready for issue. Clemens wrote to his mother
April 15th:

My book will probably be in the bookseller’s
hands in about two weeks. After that I shall
lecture. Since I have been gone, the boys
have gotten up a “call” on me signed by
two hundred Californians.

The lecture plan was the idea of Frank Fuller, who
as acting Governor of Utah had known Mark Twain on
the Comstock, and prophesied favorably of his future
career. Clemens had hunted up Fuller on landing
in New York in January, and Fuller had encouraged
the lecture then; but Clemens was doubtful.

“I have no reputation with the general public
here,” he said. “We couldn’t
get a baker’s dozen to hear me.”

But Fuller was a sanguine person, with an energy and
enthusiasm that were infectious. He insisted
that the idea was sound. It would solidify Mark
Twain’s reputation on the Atlantic coast, he
declared, insisting that the largest house in New
York, Cooper Union, should be taken. Clemens had
partially consented, and Fuller had arranged with all
the Pacific slope people who had come East, headed
by ex-Governor James W. Nye (by this time Senator
at Washington), to sign a call for the “Inimitable
Mark Twain” to appear before a New York audience.
Fuller made Nye agree to be there and introduce the
lecturer, and he was burningly busy and happy in the
prospect.

But Mark Twain was not happy. He looked at that
spacious hall and imagined the little crowd of faithful
Californian stragglers that might gather in to hear
him, and the ridicule of the papers next day.
He begged Fuller to take a smaller hall, the smallest
he could get. But only the biggest hall in New
York would satisfy Fuller. He would have taken
a larger one if he could have found it. The lecture
was announced for May 6th. Its subject was “Kanakadom,
or the Sandwich Islands” —­tickets
fifty cents. Fuller timed it to follow a few days
after Webb’s book should appear, so that one
event might help the other.

Mark Twain’s first book, ’The Celebrated
Jumping Frog of Calaveyas County, and Other Sketches’,
was scheduled for May 1st, and did, in fact, appear
on that date; but to the author it was no longer an
important event. Jim Smiley’s frog as standard-bearer
of his literary procession was not an interesting
object, so far as he was concerned—­not with
that vast, empty hall in the background and the insane
undertaking of trying to fill it. The San Francisco
venture had been as nothing compared with this.
Fuller was working night and day with abounding joy,
while the subject of his labor felt as if he were
on the brink of a fearful precipice, preparing to
try a pair of wings without first learning to fly.
At one instant he was cold with fright, the next glowing
with an infection of Fuller’s faith. He
devised a hundred schemes for the sale of seats.
Once he came rushing to Fuller, saying:

Page 182

“Send a lot of tickets down to the Chickering
Piano Company. I have promised to put on my programme,
’The piano used at this entertainment is manufactured
by Chickering."’

“But you don’t want a piano, Mark,”
said Fuller, “do you?”

“No, of course not; but they will distribute
the tickets for the sake of the advertisement, whether
we have the piano or not.”

Fuller got out a lot of handbills and hung bunches
of them in the stages, omnibuses, and horse-cars.
Clemens at first haunted these vehicles to see if
anybody noticed the bills. The little dangling
bunches seemed untouched. Finally two men came
in; one of them pulled off a bill and glanced at it.
His friend asked:

“Who’s Mark Twain?”

“God knows; I don’t!”

The lecturer could not ride any more. He was
desperate.

“Fuller,” he groaned, “there isn’t
a sign—­a ripple of interest.”

Fuller assured him that everything was working all
right “working underneath,” Fuller said—­but
the lecturer was hopeless. He reported his impressions
to the folks at home:

Everything looks shady, at least, if
not dark; I have a good agent; but now, after
we have hired the Cooper Institute, and gone to an
expense in one way or another of $500, it comes
out that I have got to play against Speaker Colfax
at Irving Hall, Ristori, and also the double troop
of Japanese jugglers, the latter opening at the great
Academy of Music—­and with all this against
me I have taken the largest house in New York
and cannot back water.

He might have added that there were other rival entertainments:
“The Flying Scud” was at Wallack’s,
the “Black Crook” was at Niblo’s,
John Brougham at the Olympic; and there were at least
a dozen lesser attractions. New York was not
the inexhaustible city in those days; these things
could gather in the public to the last man. When
the day drew near, and only a few tickets had been
sold, Clemens was desperate.

“Fuller,” he said, “there’ll
be nobody in the Cooper Union that night but you and
me. I am on the verge of suicide. I would
commit suicide if I had the pluck and the outfit.
You must paper the house, Fuller. You must send
out a flood of complementaries.”

“Very well,” said Fuller; “what
we want this time is reputation anyway —­money
is secondary. I’ll put you before the choicest,
most intelligent audience that ever was gathered in
New York City. I will bring in the school-instructors—­the
finest body of men and women in the world.”

Fuller immediately sent out a deluge of complimentary
tickets, inviting the school-teachers of New York
and Brooklyn, and all the adjacent country, to come
free and hear Mark Twain’s great lecture on Kanakadom.
This was within forty-eight hours of the time he was
to appear.

Senator Nye was to have joined Clemens and Fuller
at the Westminster, where Clemens was stopping, and
they waited for him there with a carriage, fuming
and swearing, until it was evident that he was not
coming. At last Clemens said:

Page 183

“Fuller, you’ve got to introduce me.”

“No,” suggested Fuller; “I’ve
got a better scheme than that. You get up and
begin by bemeaning Nye for not being there. That
will be better anyway.”

Clemens said:

“Well, Fuller, I can do that. I feel that
way. I’ll try to think up something fresh
and happy to say about that horse-thief.”

They drove to Cooper Union with trepidation.
Suppose, after all, the school-teachers had declined
to come? They went half an hour before the lecture
was to begin. Forty years later Mark Twain said:

“I couldn’t keep away. I wanted to
see that vast Mammoth cave and die. But when
we got near the building I saw that all the streets
were blocked with people, and that traffic had stopped.
I couldn’t believe that these people were trying
to get into Cooper Institute; but they were, and when
I got to the stage at last the house was jammed full-packed;
there wasn’t room enough left for a child.

“I was happy and I was excited beyond expression.
I poured the Sandwich Islands out on those people,
and they laughed and shouted to my entire content.
For an hour and fifteen minutes I was in paradise.”

And Fuller to-day, alive and young, when so many others
of that ancient time and event have vanished, has
added:

“When Mark appeared the Californians gave a
regular yell of welcome. When that was over he
walked to the edge of the platform, looked carefully
down in the pit, round the edges as if he were hunting
for something. Then he said: ’There
was to have been a piano here, and a senator to introduce
me. I don’t seem to discover them anywhere.
The piano was a good one, but we will have to get
along with such music as I can make with your help.
As for the senator—­Then Mark let himself
go and did as he promised about Senator Nye.
He said things that made men from the Pacific coast,
who had known Nye, scream with delight. After
that came his lecture. The first sentence captured
the audience. From that moment to the end it
was either in a roar of laughter or half breathless
by his beautiful descriptive passages. People
were positively ill for days, laughing at that lecture.”

So it was a success: everybody was glad to have
been there; the papers were kind, congratulations
numerous.

—­[Kind but not extravagant; those were
burning political times, and the doings of mere literary
people did not excite the press to the extent of headlines.
A jam around Cooper Union to-day, followed by such
an artistic triumph, would be a news event. On
the other hand, Schuyler Colfax, then Speaker of the
House, was reported to the extent of a column, nonpareil.
His lecture was of no literary importance, and no
echo of it now remains. But those were political,
not artistic, days.

Of Mark Twain’s lecture the Times notice said:

Page 184

“Nearly every one present came prepared for
considerable provocation for enjoyable laughter, and
from the appearance of their mirthful faces leaving
the hall at the conclusion of the lecture but few were
disappointed, and it is not too much to say that seldom
has so large an audience been so uniformly pleased
as the one that listened to Mark Twain’s quaint
remarks last evening. The large hall of the Union
was filled to its utmost capacity by fully two thousand
persons, which fact spoke well for the reputation
of the lecturer and his future success. Mark
Twain’s style is a quaint one both in manner
and method, and through his discourse he managed to
keep on the right side of the audience, and frequently
convulsed it with hearty laughter.... During a
description of the topography of the Sandwich Islands
the lecturer surprised his hearers by a graphic and
eloquent description of the eruption of the great
volcano, which occurred in 1840, and his language was
loudly applauded.

“Judging from the success achieved by the lecturer
last evening, he should repeat his experiment at an
early date.”]

Cooperinstitute
By Invitation of s large number of prominent Californians
and
Citizens of New York,

Marktwain

Willdeliver
ASerio-HUMEROUS lecture
CONERNING

KANAKDOMortheSandwichislands,

Cooperinstitute,
On Monday Evening, May 6,1867.

Ticketsfiftygents.
For Sale at Chickering and Sons, 852 Broadway, and
at the Principal
Hotel

Doors open at 7 o’clock.
The Wisdom will begin to flow at 8.

Mark Twain always felt grateful to the school-teachers
for that night. Many years later, when they wanted
him to read to them in Steinway Hall, he gladly gave
his services without charge.

Nor was the lecture a complete financial failure.
In spite of the flood of complementaries, there was
a cash return of some three hundred dollars from the
sale of tickets—­a substantial aid in defraying
the expenses which Fuller assumed and insisted on
making good on his own account. That was Fuller’s
regal way; his return lay in the joy of the game, and
in the winning of the larger stake for a friend.

“Mark,” he said, “it is all right.
The fortune didn’t come, but it will. The
fame has arrived; with this lecture and your book just
out you are going to be the most talked-of man in
the country. Your letters for the Alta and the
Tribune will get the widest reception of any letters
of travel ever written.”

LIX

THE FIRST BOOK

Page 185

With the shadow of the Cooper Institute so happily
dispelled, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County, and his following of Other Sketches, became
a matter of more interest. The book was a neat
blue-and-gold volume printed by John A. Gray & Green,
the old firm for which the boy, Sam Clemens, had set
type thirteen years before. The title-page bore
Webb’s name as publisher, with the American News
Company as selling agents. It further stated
that the book was edited by “John Paul,”
that is to say by Webb himself. The dedication
was in keeping with the general irresponsible character
of the venture. It was as follows:

ToJohnSmithwhom I haveknownindiversandsundryplacesabouttheworld,
andwhosemanyandmanifoldvirtuesdidalwayscommandmyesteem,
I dedicatethisbook

It is said that the man to whom a volume is dedicated
always buys a copy. If this prove true in the
present instance, a princely affluence is about to
burst upontheauthor.

The “advertisement” stated that the author
had “scaled the heights of popularity at a single
jump, and won for himself the sobriquet of the ‘Wild
Humorist of the Pacific Slope’; furthermore,
that he was known to fame as the ‘Moralist of
the Main,’” and that as such he would be
likely to go down to posterity, adding that it was
in his secondary character, as humorist, rather than
in his primal one of moralist, that the volume aimed
to present him.—­[The advertisement complete,
with extracts from the book, may be found under Appendix
E, at the end of last volume.]

Every little while, during the forty years or more
that have elapsed since then, some one has come forward
announcing Mark Twain to be as much a philosopher
as a humorist, as if this were a new discovery.
But it was a discovery chiefly to the person making
the announcement. Every one who ever knew Mark
Twain at any period of his life made the same discovery.
Every one who ever took the trouble to familiarize
himself with his work made it. Those who did
not make it have known his work only by hearsay and
quotation, or they have read it very casually, or have
been very dull. It would be much more of a discovery
to find a book in which he has not been serious—­a
philosopher, a moralist, and a poet. Even in the
Jumping Frog sketches, selected particularly for their
inconsequence, the under-vein of reflection and purpose
is not lacking. The answer to Moral Statistician—­[In
“Answers to Correspondents,” included now
in Sketches New and Old. An extract from it,
and from “A Strange Dream,” will be found
in Appendix E.]—­is fairly alive with human
wisdom and righteous wrath. The “Strange
Dream,” though ending in a joke, is aglow with
poetry. Webb’s “advertisement”
was playfully written, but it was earnestly intended,
and he writes Mark Twain down a moralist—­not
as a discovery, but as a matter of course. The
discoveries came along later, when the author’s
fame as a humorist had dazzled the nations.

Page 186

It is as well to say it here as anywhere, perhaps,
that one reason why Mark Twain found it difficult
to be accepted seriously was the fact that his personality
was in itself so essentially humorous. His physiognomy,
his manner of speech, this movement, his mental attitude
toward events —­all these were distinctly
diverting. When we add to this that his medium
of expression was nearly always full of the quaint
phrasing and those surprising appositions which we
recognize as amusing, it is not so astonishing that
his deeper, wiser, more serious purpose should be
overlooked. On the whole these unabated discoverers
serve a purpose, if only to make the rest of their
species look somewhat deeper than the comic phrase.

The little blue-and-gold volume which presented the
Frog story and twenty-six other sketches in covers
is chiefly important to-day as being Mark Twain’s
first book. The selections in it were made for
a public that had been too busy with a great war to
learn discrimination, and most of them have properly
found oblivion. Fewer than a dozen of them were
included in his collected Sketches issued eight years
later, and some even of those might have been spared;
also some that were added, for that matter; but detailed
literary criticism is not the province of this work.
The reader may investigate and judge for himself.

Clemens was pleased with the appearance of his book.
To Bret Harte he wrote:

The book is out and it is handsome. It is full
of damnable errors of grammar and deadly inconsistencies
of spelling in the Frog sketch, because I was away
and did not read proofs; but be a friend and say nothing
about these things. When my hurry is over, I will
send you a copy to pisen the children with.

That he had no exaggerated opinion of the book’s
contents or prospects we may gather from his letter
home:

As for the Frog book, I don’t believe it will
ever pay anything worth a cent. I published it
simply to advertise myself, and not with the hope
of making anything out of it.

He had grown more lenient in his opinion of the merits
of the Frog story itself since it had made friends
in high places, especially since James Russell Lowell
had pronounced it “the finest piece of humorous
writing yet produced in America”; but compared
with his lecture triumph, and his prospective journey
to foreign seas, his book venture, at best, claimed
no more than a casual regard. A Sandwich Island
book (he had collected his Union letters with the
idea of a volume) he gave up altogether after one
unsuccessful offer of it to Dick & Fitzgerald.

Frank Fuller’s statement, that the fame had
arrived, had in it some measure of truth. Lecture
propositions came from various directions. Thomas
Nast, then in the early day of his great popularity,
proposed a joint tour, in which Clemens would lecture,
while he, Nast, illustrated the remarks with lightning
caricatures. But the time was too short; the
Quaker City would sail on the 8th of June, and in the
mean time the Alta correspondent was far behind with
his New York letters. On May 29th he wrote:

Page 187

I am 18 Alta letters behind, and I must catch up or
bust. I have refused all invitations to lecture.
Don’t know how my book is coming on.

He worked like a slave for a week or so, almost night
and day, to clean up matters before his departure.
Then came days of idleness and reaction-days of waiting,
during which his natural restlessness and the old-time
regret for things done and undone, beset him.

My passage is paid, and if the ship
sails I sail on her; but I make no calculations,
have bought no cigars, no sea-going clothing—­have
made no preparations whatever—­shall
not pack my trunk till the morning we sail.

All I do know or feel is that I am wild
with impatience to move —­move—­move!
Curse the endless delays! They always kill me—­they
make me neglect every duty, and then I have a conscience
that tears me like a wild beast. I wish I
never had to stop anywhere a month. I do
more mean things the moment I get a chance to fold
my hands and sit down than ever I get forgiveness
for.

Yes, we are to meet at Mr.
Beach’s next Thursday night, and I
suppose we shall have to be
gotten up regardless of expense, in
swallow-tails, white kids
and everything ‘en regle’.

I am resigned to Rev. Mr. Hutchinson’s
or anybody else’s supervision. I don’t
mind it. I am fixed. I have got a splendid,
immoral, tobacco-smoking, wine-drinking, godless
roommate who is as good and true and right-minded
a man as ever lived—­a man whose blameless
conduct and example will always be an eloquent sermon
to all who shall come within their influence.
But send on the professional preachers—­there
are none I like better to converse with; if they’re
not narrowminded and bigoted they make good companions.

The “splendid immoral room-mate” was Dan
Slote—­“Dan,” of The Innocents,
a lovable character—­all as set down.
Samuel Clemens wrote one more letter to his mother
and sister—­a conscience-stricken, pessimistic
letter of good-by written the night before sailing.
Referring to the Alta letters he says:

I think they are the stupidest
letters ever written from New York.
Corresponding has been a perfect
drag ever since I got to the
States. If it continues
abroad, I don’t know what the Tribune and
Alta folk will think.

He remembers Orion, who had been officially eliminated
when Nevada had received statehood.

I often wonder if his law business is
going satisfactorily. I wish I had gone to
Washington in the winter instead of going West.
I could have gouged an office out of Bill Stewart
for him, and that would have atoned for the loss
of my home visit. But I am so worthless that
it seems to me I never do anything or accomplish anything
that lingers in my mind as a pleasant memory.
My mind is stored full of unworthy conduct toward
Orion and toward you all, and an accusing conscience

Page 188

gives me peace only in excitement and restless
moving from place to place. If I could only say
I had done one thing for any of you that entitled
me to your good opinions (I say nothing of your
love, for I am sure of that, no matter how unworthy
of it I may make myself—­from Orion down,
you have always given me that; all the days of
my life, when God Almighty knows I have seldom
deserved it), I believe I could go home and stay there
—­and I know I would care little for
the world’s praise or blame. There
is no satisfaction in the world’s praise anyhow,
and it has no worth to me save in the way of business.
I tried to gather up its compliments to send you,
but the work was distasteful and I dropped it.

You observe that under a cheerful exterior
I have got a spirit that is angry with me and
gives me freely its contempt. I can get away
from that at sea, and be tranquil and satisfied;
and so, with my parting love and benediction for
Orion and all of you, I say good-by and God bless
you all-and welcome the wind that wafts a weary soul
to the sunny lands of the Mediterranean!

Yrs.
forever,Sam

LX

THE INNOCENTS AT SEA

Holylandpleasureexcursion

Steamer:
Quaker City.

Captain
C. C. Duncan.

Left New
York at 2 P.m., June 8, 1867.

Rough weather—­anchored
within the harbor to lay all night.

That first note recorded an event momentous in Mark
Twain’s career—­an event of supreme
importance; if we concede that any link in a chain
regardless of size is of more importance than any other
link. Undoubtedly it remains the most conspicuous
event, as the world views it now, in retrospect.

The note further heads a new chapter of history in
sea-voyaging. No such thing as the sailing of
an ocean steamship with a pleasure-party on a long
transatlantic cruise had ever occurred before.
A similar project had been undertaken the previous
year, but owing to a cholera scare in the East it
had been abandoned. Now the dream had become a
fact—­a stupendous fact when we consider
it. Such an important beginning as that now would
in all likelihood furnish the chief news story of the
day.

But they had different ideas of news in those days.
There were no headlines announcing the departure of
the Quaker City—­only the barest mention
of the ship’s sailing, though a prominent position
was given to an account of a senatorial excursion-party
which set out that same morning over the Union Pacific
Railway, then under construction. Every name
in that political party was set dawn, and not one of
them except General Hancock will ever be heard of
again. The New York Times, however, had some
one on its editorial staff who thought it worth while
to comment a little on the history-making Quaker City

Page 189

excursion. The writer was pleasantly complimentary
to officers and passengers. He referred to Moses
S. Beach, of the Sun, who was taking with him type
and press, whereby he would “skilfully utilize
the brains of the company for their mutual edification.”
Mr. Beecher and General Sherman would find talent
enough aboard to make the hours go pleasantly (evidently
the writer had not interested himself sufficiently
to know that these gentlemen were not along), and
the paragraph closed by prophesying other such excursions,
and wishing the travelers “good speed, a happy
voyage, and a safe return.”

That was handsome, especially for those days; only
now, some fine day, when an airship shall start with
a band of happy argonauts to land beyond the sunrise
for the first time in history, we shall feature it
and emblazon it with pictures in the Sunday papers,
and weeklies, and in the magazines.—­[The
Quaker City idea was so unheard-of that in some of
the foreign ports visited, the officials could not
believe that the vessel was simply a pleasure-craft,
and were suspicious of some dark, ulterior purpose.]

That Henry Ward Beecher and General Sherman had concluded
not to go was a heavy disappointment at first; but
it proved only a temporary disaster. The inevitable
amalgamation of all ship companies took place.
The sixty-seven travelers fell into congenial groups,
or they mingled and devised amusements, and gossiped
and became a big family, as happy and as free from
contention as families of that size are likely to be.

The Quaker City was a good enough ship and sizable
for her time. She was registered eighteen hundred
tons—­about one-tenth the size of Mediterranean
excursion-steamers today—­and when conditions
were favorable she could make ten knots an hour under
steam—­or, at least, she could do it with
the help of her auxiliary sails. Altogether she
was a cozy, satisfactory ship, and they were a fortunate
company who had her all to themselves and went out
on her on that long-ago ocean gipsying. She has
grown since then, even to the proportions of the Mayflower.
It was necessary for her to grow to hold all of those
who in later times claimed to have sailed in her on
that voyage with Mark Twain.—­[The Quaker
City passenger list will be found under Appendix F,
at the end of last volume.]

They were not all ministers and deacons aboard the
Quaker City. Clemens found other congenial spirits
be sides his room-mate Dan Slote—­among
them the ship’s surgeon, Dr. A. Reeve Jackson
(the guide-destroying “Doctor” of The
Innocents); Jack Van Nostrand, of New Jersey ("Jack");
Julius Moulton, of St. Louis ("Moult"), and other care-free
fellows, the smoking-room crowd which is likely to
make comradeship its chief watchword. There were
companionable people in the cabin crowd also —­fine,
intelligent men and women, especially one of the latter,
a middle-aged, intellectual, motherly soul—­Mrs.
A. W. Fairbanks, of Cleveland, Ohio. Mrs. Fairbanks—­herself

Page 190

a newspaper correspondent for her husband’s
paper, the Cleveland Herald had a large influence on
the character and general tone of those Quaker City
letters which established Mark Twain’s larger
fame. She was an able writer herself; her judgment
was thoughtful, refined, unbiased—­altogether
of a superior sort. She understood Samuel Clemens,
counseled him, encouraged him to read his letters
aloud to her, became in reality “Mother Fairbanks,”
as they termed her, to him and to others of that ship
who needed her kindly offices.

In one of his home letters, later, he said of her:

She was the most refined, intelligent,
cultivated lady in the ship, and altogether the
kindest and best. She sewed my buttons on, kept
my clothing in presentable trim, fed me on Egyptian
jam (when I behaved), lectured me awfully on the
quarter-deck on moonlit promenading evenings,
and cured me of several bad habits. I am under
lasting obligations to her. She looks young because
she is so good, but she has a grown son and daughter
at home.

In one of the early letters which Mrs. Fairbanks wrote
to her paper she is scarcely less complimentary to
him, even if in a different way.

We have D.D.’s and M.D.’s—­we
have men of wisdom and men of wit. There
is one table from which is sure to come a peal of laughter,
and all eyes are turned toward Mark Twain, whose
face is, perfectly mirth-provoking. Sitting
lazily at the table, scarcely genteel in his appearance,
there is something, I know not what, that interests
and attracts. I saw to-day at dinner venerable
divines and sage- looking men convulsed with laughter
at his drolleries and quaint, odd manners.

It requires only a few days on shipboard for acquaintances
to form, and presently a little afternoon group was
gathering to hear Mark Twain read his letters.
Mrs. Fairbanks was there, of course, also Mr. and Mrs.
S. L. Severance, likewise of Cleveland, and Moses
S. Beach, of the Sun, with his daughter Emma, a girl
of seventeen. Dan Slote was likely to be there,
too, and Jack, and the Doctor, and Charles J. Langdon,
of Elmira, New York, a boy of eighteen, who had conceived
a deep admiration for the brilliant writer. They
were fortunate ones who first gathered to hear those
daring, wonderful letters.

But the benefit was a mutual one. He furnished
a priceless entertainment, and he derived something
equally priceless in return—­the test of
immediate audience and the boon of criticism.
Mrs. Fairbanks especially was frankly sincere.
Mr. Severance wrote afterward:

One afternoon I saw him tearing up a
bunch of the soft, white paper- copy paper, I
guess the newspapers call it-on which he had written
something, and throwing the fragments into the
Mediterranean. I inquired of him why he cast
away the fruits of his labors in that manner.

“Well,” he drawled, “Mrs. Fairbanks
thinks it oughtn’t to be printed, and, like
as not, she is right.”

Page 191

And Emma Beach (Mrs. Abbott Thayer) remembers hearing
him say:

“Well, Mrs. Fairbanks has just destroyed another
four hours’ work for me.”

Sometimes he played chess with Emma Beach, who thought
him a great hero because, once when a crowd of men
were tormenting a young lad, a passenger, Mark Twain
took the boy’s part and made them desist.

“I am sure I was right, too,” she declares;
“heroism came natural to him.”

Mr. Severance recalls another incident which, as he
says, was trivial enough, but not easy to forget:

We were having a little celebration over the birthday
anniversary of Mrs. Duncan, wife of our captain.
Mark Twain got up and made a little speech, in which
he said Mrs. Duncan was really older than Methuselah
because she knew a lot of things that Methuselah never
heard of. Then he mentioned a number of more
or less modern inventions, and wound up by saying,
“What did Methuselah know about a barbed-wire
fence?”

Except Following the Equator, The Innocents Abroad
comes nearer to being history than any other of Mark
Twain’s travel-books. The notes for it
were made on the spot, and there was plenty of fact,
plenty of fresh, new experience, plenty of incident
to set down. His idea of descriptive travel in
those days was to tell the story as it happened; also,
perhaps, he had not then acquired the courage of his
inventions. We may believe that the adventures
with Jack, Dan, and the Doctor are elaborated here
and there; but even those happened substantially as
recorded. There is little to add, then, to the
story of that halcyon trip, and not much to elucidate.

The old note-books give a light here and there that
is interesting. It is curious to be looking through
them now, trying to realize that these penciled memoranda
were the fresh, first impressions that would presently
grow into the world’s most delightful book of
travel; that they were set down in the very midst
of that care-free little company that frolicked through
Italy, climbed wearily the arid Syrian hills.
They are all dead now; but to us they are as alive
and young to-day as when they followed the footprints
of the Son of Man through Palestine, and stood at last
before the Sphinx, impressed and awed by its “five
thousand slow-revolving years.”

Some of the items consist of no more than a few terse,
suggestive words —­serious, humorous, sometimes
profane. Others are statistical, descriptive,
elaborated. Also there are drawings—­“not
copied,” he marks them, with a pride not always
justified by the result. The earlier notes are
mainly comments on the “pilgrims,” the
freak pilgrims: “the Frenchy-looking woman
who owns a dog and keeps up an interminable biography
of him to the passengers”; the “long-legged,
simple, wide-mouthed, horse-laughing young fellow
who once made a sea voyage to Fortress Monroe, and
quotes eternally from his experiences”; also,
there is reference to another young man, “good,

Page 192

accommodating, pleasant but fearfully green.”
This young person would become the “Interrogation
Point,” in due time, and have his picture on
page 71 (old edition), while opposite him, on page
70, would appear the “oracle,” identified
as one Doctor Andrews, who (the note-book says) had
the habit of “smelling in guide-books for knowledge
and then trying to play it for old information that
has been festering in his brain.” Sometimes
there are abstract notes such as:

How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good
thing that no one had ever said it before.

Of the “character” notes, the most important
and elaborated is that which presents the “Poet
Lariat.” This is the entry, somewhat epitomized:

Bloodgood H.
Cutter

He is fifty years old, and small of
his age. He dresses in homespun, and is a
simple-minded, honest, old-fashioned farmer, with
a strange proclivity for writing rhymes. He
writes them on all possible subjects, and gets
them printed on slips of paper, with his portrait
at the head. These he will give to any man who
comes along, whether he has anything against him
or not . . . .

Dan said:

“It must be a great
happiness to you to sit down at the close of day
and put its events all down
in rhymes and poetry, like Byron and
Shakespeare and those fellows.”

“Oh yes, it is—­it
is—­Why, many’s the time I’ve
had to get up in
the night when it comes on
me:

Whether
we’re on the sea or the land
We’ve
all got to go at the word of command—­

“Hey! how’s that?”

A curious character was Cutter—­a Long Island
farmer with the obsession of rhyme. In his old
age, in an interview, he said:

“Mark was generally writing and he was glum.
He would write what we were doing, and I would write
poetry, and Mark would say:

“‘For Heaven’s sake, Cutter, keep
your poems to yourself.’

“Yes, Mark was pretty glum, and he was generally
writing.”

Poor old Poet Lariat—­dead now with so many
others of that happy crew. We may believe that
Mark learned to be “glum” when he saw the
Lariat approaching with his sheaf of rhymes.
We may believe, too, that he was “generally
writing.” He contributed fifty-three letters
to the Alta during that five months and six to the
Tribune. They would average about two columns
nonpareil each, which is to say four thousand words,
or something like two hundred and fifty thousand words
in all. To turn out an average of fifteen hundred
words a day, with continuous sight-seeing besides,
one must be generally writing during any odd intervals;
those who are wont to regard Mark Twain as lazy may
consider these statistics. That he detested manual
labor is true enough, but at the work for which he
was fitted and intended it may be set down here upon
authority (and despite his own frequent assertions
to the contrary) that to his last year he was the
most industrious of men.

Page 193

LXI

THE INNOCENTS ABROAD

It was Dan, Jack, and the Doctor who with Mark Twain
wandered down through Italy and left moral footprints
that remain to this day. The Italian guides are
wary about showing pieces of the True Cross, fragments
of the Crown of Thorns, and the bones of saints since
then. They show them, it is true, but with a
smile; the name of Mark Twain is a touch-stone to
test their statements. Not a guide in Italy but
has heard the tale of that iconoclastic crew, and
of the book which turned their marvels into myths,
their relics into bywords.

It was Doctor Jackson, Colonel Denny, Doctor Birch,
and Samuel Clemens who evaded the quarantine and made
the perilous night trip to Athens and looked upon
the Parthenon and the sleeping city by moonlight.
It is all set down in the notes, and the account varies
little from that given in the book; only he does not
tell us that Captain Duncan and the quartermaster,
Pratt, connived at the escapade, or how the latter
watched the shore in anxious suspense until he heard
the whistle which was their signal to be taken aboard.
It would have meant six months’ imprisonment
if they had been captured, for there was no discretion
in the Greek law.

It was T. D. Crocker, A. N. Sanford, Col. Peter
Kinney, and William Gibson who were delegated to draft
the address to the Emperor of Russia at Yalta, with
Samuel L. Clemens as chairman of that committee.
The chairman wrote the address, the opening sentence
of which he grew so weary of hearing:

We are a handful of private
citizens of America, traveling simply
for recreation, and unostentatiously,
as becomes our unofficial
state.

The address is all set down in the notes, and there
also exists the first rough draft, with the emendations
in his own hand. He deplores the time it required:

That job is over. Writing addresses
to emperors is not my strong suit. However,
if it is not as good as it might be it doesn’t
signify—­the other committeemen ought
to have helped me write it; they had nothing to
do, and I had my hands full. But for bothering
with this I would have caught up entirely with
my New York Tribune correspondence and nearly
up with the San Francisco.

They wanted him also to read the address to the Emperor,
but he pointed out that the American consul was the
proper person for that office. He tells how the
address was presented:

August 26th. The Imperial carriages were in waiting
at eleven, and at twelve we were at the palace....

The Consul for Odessa read the address and the Czar
said frequently, “Good—­very good;
indeed”—­and at the close, “I
am very, very grateful.”

It was not improper for him to set down all this,
and much more, in his own note-book—­not
then for publication. It was in fact a very proper
record—­for today.

Page 194

One incident of the imperial audience Mark Twain omitted
from his book, perhaps because the humor of it had
not yet become sufficiently evident. “The
humorous perception of a thing is a pretty slow growth
sometimes,” he once remarked. It was about
seventeen years before he could laugh enjoyably at
a slight mistake he made at the Emperor’s reception.
He set down a memorandum of it, then, for fear it
might be lost:

There were a number of great dignitaries
of the Empire there, and although, as a general
thing, they were dressed in citizen’s clothing,
I observed that the most of them wore a very small
piece of ribbon in the lapels of their coats.
That little touch of color struck my fancy, and
it seemed to me a good idea to add it to my own attractions;
not imagining that it had any special significance.
So I stepped aside, hunted up a bit of red ribbon,
and ornamented my lapel with it. Presently,
Count Festetics, the Grand Master of ceremonies,
and the only man there who was gorgeously arrayed,
in full official costume, began to show me a great
many attentions. He was particularly polite,
and pleasant, and anxious to be of service to
me. Presently, he asked me what order of nobility
I belonged to? I said, “I didn’t
belong to any.” Then he asked me what order
of knighthood I belonged to? I said, “None.”
Then he asked me what the red ribbon in my buttonhole
stood for? I saw, at once, what an ass I
had been making of myself, and was accordingly confused
and embarrassed. I said the first thing that
came into my mind, and that was that the ribbon
was merely the symbol of a club of journalists
to which I belonged, and I was not pursued with any
more of Count Festetic’s attentions.

Later, I got on very familiar terms
with an old gentleman, whom I took to be the head
gardener, and walked him all about the gardens, slipping
my arm into his without invitation, yet without demur
on his part, and by and by was confused again
when I found that he was not a gardener at all,
but the Lord High Admiral of Russia! I almost
made up my mind that I would never call on an Emperor
again.

Like all Mediterranean excursionists, those first
pilgrims were insatiable collectors of curios, costumes,
and all manner of outlandish things. Dan Slote
had the stateroom hung and piled with such gleanings.
At Constantinople his room-mate writes:

I thought Dan had got the state-room
pretty full of rubbish at last, but awhile ago
his dragoman arrived with a brand-new ghastly tombstone
of the Oriental pattern, with his name handsomely carved
and gilted on it in Turkish characters. That
fellow will buy a Circassian slave next.

It was Church, Denny, Jack, Davis, Dan, Moult, and
Mark Twain who made the “long trip” through
Syria from Beirut to Jerusalem with their elaborate
camping outfit and decrepit nags “Jericho,”
“Baalbec,” and the rest. It was better
camping than that Humboldt journey of six years before,

Page 195

though the horses were not so dissimilar, and altogether
it was a hard, nerve-racking experience, climbing
the arid hills of Palestine in that torrid summer
heat. Nobody makes that trip in summer-time now.
Tourists hurry out of Syria before the first of April,
and they do not go back before November. One
brief quotation from Mark Twain’s book gives
us an idea of what that early party of pilgrims had
to undergo:

We left Damascus at noon and rode across
the plain a couple of hours, and then the party
stopped a while in the shade of some fig- trees
to give me a chance to rest. It was the hottest
day we had seen yet—­the sun-flames
shot down like the shafts of fire that stream
out before a blow-pipe; the rays seemed to fall in
a deluge on the head and pass downward like rain
from a roof. I imagined I could distinguish
between the floods of rays. I thought I could
tell when each flood struck my head, when it reached
my shoulders, and when the next one came.
It was terrible.

He had been ill with cholera at Damascus, a light
attack; but any attack of that dread disease is serious
enough. He tells of this in the book, but he
does not mention, either in the book or in his notes,
the attack which Dan Slote had some days later.
It remained for William F. Church, of the party, to
relate that incident, for it was the kind of thing
that Mark Twain was not likely to record, or even
to remember. Doctor Church was a deacon with
orthodox views and did not approve of Mark Twain; he
thought him sinful, irreverent, profane.

“He was the worst man I ever knew,” Church
said; then he added, “And the best.”

What happened was this: At the end of a terrible
day of heat, when the party had camped on the edge
of a squalid Syrian village, Dan was taken suddenly
ill. It was cholera, beyond doubt. Dan could
not go on—­he might never go on. The
chances were that way. It was a serious matter
all around. To wait with Dan meant to upset their
travel schedule—­it might mean to miss the
ship. Consultation was held and a resolution
passed (the pilgrims were always passing resolutions)
to provide for Dan as well as possible, and leave
him behind. Clemens, who had remained with Dan,
suddenly appeared and said:

“Gentlemen, I understand that you are going
to leave Dan Slote here alone. I’ll be
d—–­d if I do!”

And he didn’t. He stayed there and brought
Dan into Jerusalem, a few days late, but convalescent.

Perhaps most of them were not always reverent during
that Holy Land trip. It was a trying journey,
and after fierce days of desert hills the reaction
might not always spare even the holiest memories.
Jack was particularly sinful. When they learned
the price for a boat on Galilee, and the deacons who
had traveled nearly half around the world to sail on
that sacred water were confounded by the charge, Jack
said:

“Well, Denny, do you wonder now that Christ
walked?”

Page 196

It was the irreverent Jack who one morning (they had
camped the night before by the ruins of Jericho) refused
to get up to see the sun rise across the Jordan.
Deacon Church went to his tent.

“Jack, my boy, get up. Here is the place
where the Israelites crossed over into the Promised
Land, and beyond are the mountains of Moab, where
Moses lies buried.”

“Moses who!” said Jack.

“Oh, Jack, my boy, Moses, the great lawgiver—­who
led the Israelites out of Egypt-forty years through
the wilderness—­to the Promised Land.”

“Forty years!” said Jack. “How
far was it?”

“It was three hundred miles, Jack; a great wilderness,
and he brought them through in safety.”

Jack regarded him with scorn. “Huh, Moses—­three
hundred miles forty years—­why, Ben Holiday
would have brought them through in thirty-six hours!”—­[Ben
Holiday, owner of the Overland stages, and a man of
great executive ability. This incident, a true
one, is more elaborately told in Roughing It, but
it seems pertinent here.]

Jack probably learned more about the Bible during
that trip-its history and its heroes-than during all
his former years. Nor was Jack the only one of
that group thus benefited. The sacred landmarks
of Palestine inspire a burning interest in the Scriptures,
and Mark Twain probably did not now regret those early
Sunday-school lessons; certainly he did not fail to
review them exhaustively on that journey. His
note-books fairly overflow with Bible references;
the Syrian chapters in The Innocents Abroad are permeated
with the poetry and legendary beauty of the Bible
story. The little Bible he carried on that trip,
bought in Constantinople, was well worn by the time
they reached the ship again at Jaffa. He must
have read it with a large and persistent interest;
also with a double benefit. For, besides the
knowledge acquired, he was harvesting a profit—­probably
unsuspected at the time—–­viz., the
influence of the most direct and beautiful English—­the
English of the King James version—­which
could not fail to affect his own literary method at
that impressionable age. We have already noted
his earlier admiration for that noble and simple poem,
“The Burial of Moses,” which in the Palestine
note-book is copied in full. All the tendency
of his expression lay that way, and the intense consideration
of stately Bible phrase and imagery could hardly fail
to influence his mental processes. The very distinct
difference of style, as shown in The Innocents Abroad
and in his earlier writings, we may believe was in
no small measure due to his study of the King James
version during those weeks in Palestine.

He bought another Bible at Jerusalem; but it was not
for himself. It was a little souvenir volume
bound in olive and balsam wood, and on the fly-leaf
is inscribed:

Mrs. Jane Clemens from her
son. Jerusalem, Sept. 24, 1867.

There is one more circumstance of that long cruise-recorded
neither in the book nor the notes—­an incident
brief, but of more importance in the life of Samuel
Clemens than any heretofore set down. It occurred
in the beautiful Bay of Smyrna, on the fifth or sixth
of September, while the vessel lay there for the Ephesus
trip.

Page 197

Reference has been made to young Charles Langdon,
of Elmira (the “Charley” once mentioned
in the Innocents), as an admirer of Mark Twain.
There was a good deal of difference in their ages,
and they were seldom of the same party; but sometimes
the boy invited the journalist to his cabin and, boy-like,
exhibited his treasures. He had two sisters at
home; and of Olivia, the youngest, he had brought a
dainty miniature done on ivory in delicate tints—­a
sweet-pictured countenance, fine and spiritual.
On that fateful day in the day of Smyrna, Samuel Clemens,
visiting in young Langdon’s cabin, was shown
this portrait. He looked at it with long admiration,
and spoke of it reverently, for the delicate face
seemed to him to be something more than a mere human
likeness. Each time he came, after that, he asked
to see the picture, and once even begged to be allowed
to take it away with him. The boy would not agree
to this, and the elder man looked long and steadily
at the miniature, resolving in his mind that some
day he would meet the owner of that lovely face—­a
purpose for once in accord with that which the fates
had arranged for him, in the day when all things were
arranged, the day of the first beginning.

LXII

THE RETURN OF THE PILGRIMS

The last note-book entry bears date of October 11th:

At sea, somewhere in the neighborhood
of Malta. Very stormy.

Terrible death to be talked
to death. The storm has blown two small
land birds and a hawk to sea
and they came on board. Sea full of
flying-fish.

That is all. There is no record of the week’s
travel in Spain, which a little group of four made
under the picturesque Gibraltar guide, Benunes, still
living and quite as picturesque at last accounts.
This side-trip is covered in a single brief paragraph
in the Innocents, and the only account we have of
it is in a home letter, from Cadiz, of October 24th:

We left Gibraltar at noon and rode to
Algeciras (4 hours), thus dodging the quarantine—­took
dinner, and then rode horseback all night in a
swinging trot, and at daylight took a caleche (a-wheeled
vehicle), and rode 5 hours—­then took
cars and traveled till twelve at night. That
landed us at Seville, and we were over the hard part
of our trip and somewhat tired. Since then
we have taken things comparatively easy, drifting
around from one town to another and attracting
a good deal of attention—­for I guess strangers
do not wander through Andalusia and the other
southern provinces of Spain often. The country
is precisely what it was when Don Quixote and Sancho
Panza were possible characters.

But I see now what the glory of Spain
must have been when it was under Moorish domination.
No, I will not say that—­but then when one
is carried away, infatuated, entranced, with the wonders
of the Alhambra and the supernatural beauty of

Page 198

the Alcazar, he is apt to overflow with admiration
for the splendid intellects that created them.

We may wish that he had left us a chapter of that
idyllic journey, but it will never be written now.
A night or two before the vessel reached New York
there was the usual good-by assembly, and for this
occasion, at Mrs. Severance’s request, Mark
Twain wrote some verses. They were not especially
notable, for meter and rhyme did not come easy to him,
but one prophetic stanza is worth remembering.
In the opening lines the passengers are referred to
as a fleet of vessels, then follows:

Lo! other
ships of that parted fleet
Shall suffer
this fate or that:
One shall
be wrecked, another shall sink,
Or ground
on treacherous flat.
Some shall
be famed in many lands
As good
ships, fast and fair,
And some
shall strangely disappear,
Men know
not when or where.

The Quaker City returned to America on November 19,
1867, and Mark Twain found himself, if not famous,
at least in very wide repute. The fifty-three
letters to the Alta and the half-dozen to the New York
Tribune had carried his celebrity into every corner
of the States and Territories. Vivid, fearless,
full of fresh color, humor, poetry, they came as a
revelation to a public weary of the driveling, tiresome
travel-letters of that period. They preached a
new gospel in travel-literature: the gospel of
seeing with an overflowing honesty; a gospel of sincerity
in according praises to whatever seemed genuine, and
ridicule to the things considered sham. It was
the gospel that Mark Twain would continue to preach
during his whole career. It became his chief
literary message to the world-a world waiting for that
message.

Moreover, the letters were literature. He had
received, from whatever source, a large and very positive
literary impulse, a loftier conception and expression.
It was at Tangier that he first struck the grander
chord, the throbbing cadence of human story.

Here is a crumbling wall that was old when Columbus
discovered America; old when Peter the Hermit roused
the knightly men of the Middle Ages to arm for the
first Crusade; old when Charlemagne and his paladins
beleaguered enchanted castles and battled with giants
and genii in the fabled days of the olden time; old
when Christ and his disciples walked the earth; stood
where it stands to-day when the lips of Memnon were
vocal and men bought and sold in the streets of ancient
Thebes.

This is pure poetry. He had never touched so
high a strain before, but he reached it often after
that, and always with an ever-increasing mastery and
confidence. In Venice, in Rome, in Athens, through
the Holy Land, his retrospection becomes a stately
epic symphony, a processional crescendo that swings
ever higher until it reaches that sublime strain,
the ageless contemplation of the Sphinx. We cannot
forego a paragraph or two of that word-picture:

Page 199

After years of waiting it was before
me at last. The great face was so sad, so
earnest, so longing, so patient. There was a dignity
not of earth in its mien, and in its countenance
a benignity such as never anything human wore.
It was stone, but it seemed sentient. If
ever image of stone thought, it was thinking.
It was looking toward the verge of the landscape,
yet looking at nothing—­nothing but
distance and vacancy. It was looking over and
beyond everything of the present, and far into
the past.... It was thinking of the wars
of the departed ages; of the empires it had seen created
and destroyed; of the nations whose birth it had
witnessed, whose progress it had watched, whose
annihilation it had noted; of the joy and sorrow,
the life and death, the grandeur and decay, of five
thousand slow-revolving years . . . .

The Sphinx is grand in its loneliness;
it is imposing in its magnitude; it is impressive
in the mystery that hangs over its story.
And there is that in the overshadowing majesty of this
eternal figure of stone, with its accusing memory
of the deeds of all ages, which reveals to one
something of what we shall feel when we shall
stand at last in the awful presence of God.

Then that closing word of Egypt. He elaborated
it for the book, and did not improve it. Let
us preserve here its original form.

We are glad to have seen Egypt.
We are glad to have seen that old land which taught
Greece her letters—­and through Greece, Rome—­and
through Rome, the world—­that venerable
cradle of culture and refinement which could have
humanized and civilized the Children of Israel,
but allowed them to depart out of her borders savages—­those
Children whom we still revere, still love, and
whose sad shortcomings we still excuse—­not
because they were savages, but because they were
the chosen savages of God.

The Holy Land letters alone would have brought him
fame. They presented the most graphic and sympathetic
picture of Syrian travel ever written —­one
that will never become antiquated or obsolete so long
as human nature remains unchanged. From beginning
to end the tale is rarely, reverently told. Its
closing paragraph has not been surpassed in the voluminous
literature of that solemn land:

Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes.
Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered
its fields and fettered its energies. Where
Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers that
solemn sea now floods the plain, in whose bitter
waters no living thing exists—­over
whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless
and dead—­about whose borders nothing grows
but weeds and scattering tufts of cane, and that
treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to
parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch.
Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan
where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised
Land with songs of rejoicing one finds only a

Page 200

squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho
the accursed lies a moldering ruin today, even
as Joshua’s miracle left it more than three
thousand years ago; Bethlehem and Bethany, in their
poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about them
now to remind one that they once knew the high
honor of the Saviour’s presence; the hallowed
spot where the shepherds watched their flocks by
night, and where the angels sang Peace on earth, goodwill
to men, is untenanted by any living creature,
and unblessed by any feature that is pleasant
to the eye. Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest
name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur,
and is become a pauper village; the riches of
Solomon are no longer there to compel the admiration
of visiting Oriental queens; the wonderful temple
which was the pride and the glory of Israel is gone,
and the Ottoman crescent is lifted above the spot where,
on that most memorable day in the annals of the
world, they reared the Holy Cross. The noted
Sea of Galilee, where Roman fleets once rode at
anchor and the disciples of the Saviour sailed in their
ships, was long ago deserted by the devotees of
war and commerce, and its borders are a silent
wilderness; Capernaum is a shapeless ruin; Magdala
is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin
have vanished from the earth, and the “desert
places” round about them where thousands
of men once listened to the Saviour’s voice and
ate the miraculous bread sleep in the hush of
a solitude that is inhabited only by birds of
prey and skulking foxes.

Palestine is desolate and
unlovely. And why should it be otherwise?
Can the curse of the Deity
beautify a land?

It would be easy to quote pages here—­a
pictorial sequence from Gibraltar to Athens, from
Athens to Egypt, a radiant panoramic march. In
time he would write technically better. He would
avoid solecism, he would become a greater master of
vocabulary and phrase, but in all the years ahead he
would never match the lambent bloom and spontaneity
of those fresh, first impressions of Mediterranean
lands and seas. No need to mention the humor,
the burlesque, the fearless, unrestrained ridicule
of old masters and of sacred relics, so called.
These we have kept familiar with much repetition.
Only, the humor had grown more subtle, more restrained;
the burlesque had become impersonal and harmless,
the ridicule so frank and good-natured, that even
the old masters themselves might have enjoyed it,
while the most devoted churchman, unless blinded by
bigotry, would find in it satisfaction, rather than
sacrilege.

The final letter was written for the New York Herald
after the arrival, and was altogether unlike those
that preceded it. Gaily satirical and personal—­inclusively
so—­it might better have been left unwritten,
for it would seem to have given needless offense to
a number of goodly people, whose chief sin was the
sedateness of years. However, it is all past
now, and those who were old then, and perhaps queer
and pious and stingy, do not mind any more, and those
who were young and frivolous have all grown old too,
and most of them have set out on the still farther
voyage. Somewhere, it may be, they gather, now;
and then, and lightly, tenderly recall their old-time
journeying.

Page 201

LXIII

IN WASHINGTON—­A PUBLISHING PROPOSITION

Clemens remained but one day in New York. Senator
Stewart had written, about the time of the departure
of the Quaker City, offering him the position of private
secretary—­a position which was to give him
leisure for literary work, with a supporting salary
as well. Stewart no doubt thought it would be
considerably to his advantage to have the brilliant
writer and lecturer attached to his political establishment,
and Clemens likewise saw possibilities in the arrangement.
From Naples, in August, he had written accepting Stewart’s
offer; he lost no time now in discussing the matter
in person.—­[In a letter home, August 9th,
he referred to the arrangement: “I wrote
to Bill Stewart to-day accepting his private secretaryship
in Washington, next winter.”]

There seems to have been little difficulty in concluding
the arrangement. When Clemens had been in Washington
a week we find him writing:

Dearfolks, Tired and sleepy—­been
in Congress all day and making newspaper acquaintances.
Stewart is to look up a clerkship in the Patent
Office for Orion. Things necessarily move slowly
where there is so much business and such armies
of office-seekers to be attended to. I guess
it will be all right. I intend it shall be all
right.

I have 18 invitations to lecture,
at $100 each, in various parts
of the Union—­have
declined them all. I am for business now.

Belong on the Tribune Staff, and
shall write occasionally. Am
offered the same berth to-day on the Herald by
letter. Shall write
Mr. Bennett and accept, as soon as I hear from
Tribune that it will
not interfere. Am pretty well known now—­intend
to be better known.
Am hobnobbing with these old Generals and Senators
and other humbugs
for no good purpose. Don’t have any
more trouble making friends
than I did in California. All serene.
Good-by. Shall continue on
the Alta.
Yours affectionately,Sam.

P.S.—­I room with Bill
Stewart and board at Willard’s Hotel.

But the secretary arrangement was a brief matter.
It is impossible to conceive of Mark Twain as anybody’s
secretary, especially as the secretary of Senator
Stewart.

—­[In Senator Stewart’s memoirs he
refers unpleasantly to Mark Twain, and after relating
several incidents that bear only strained relations
to the truth, states that when the writer returned
from the Holy Land he (Stewart) offered him a secretaryship
as a sort of charity. He adds that Mark Twain’s
behavior on his premises was such that a threat of
a thrashing was necessary. The reason for such
statements becomes apparent, however, when he adds
that in ‘Roughing It’ the author accuses
him of cheating, prints a picture of him with a hatch
over his eye, and claims to have given him a sound
thrashing, none of which statements, save only the
one concerning the picture (an apparently unforgivable
offense to his dignity), is true, as the reader may
easily ascertain for himself.]

Page 202

Within a few weeks he was writing humorous accounts
of “My Late Senatorial Secretaryship,”
“Facts Concerning the Recent Resignation,”
etc., all good-natured burlesque, but inspired,
we may believe, by the change: These articles
appeared in the New York Tribune, the New York Citizen,
and the Galaxy Magazine.

There appears to have been no ill-feeling at this
time between Clemens and Stewart. If so, it is
not discoverable in any of the former’s personal
or newspaper correspondence. In fact, in his article
relating to his “late senatorial secretaryship”
he puts the joke, so far as it is a joke, on Senator
James W. Nye, probably as an additional punishment
for Nye’s failure to appear on the night of
his lecture. He established headquarters with
a brilliant newspaper correspondent named Riley.
“One of the best men in Washington—­or
elsewhere,” he tells us in a brief sketch of
that person.—­[See Riley, newspaper correspondent.
Sketches New and Old.]—­He had known Riley
in San Francisco; the two were congenial, and settled
down to their several undertakings.

Clemens was chiefly concerned over two things:
he wished to make money and he wished to secure a
government appointment for Orion. He had used
up the most of his lecture accumulations, and was moderately
in debt. His work was in demand at good rates,
for those days, and with working opportunity he could
presently dispose of his financial problem. The
Tribune was anxious for letters; the Enterprise and
Alta were waiting for them; the Herald, the Chicago
Tribune, the magazines—­all had solicited
contributions; the lecture bureaus pursued him.
Personally his outlook was bright.

The appointment for Orion was a different matter.
The powers were not especially interested in a brother;
there were too many brothers and assorted relatives
on the official waiting-list already. Clemens
was offered appointments for himself—­a
consulship, a post-mastership; even that of San Francisco.
From the Cabinet down, the Washington political contingent
had read his travel-letters, and was ready to recognize
officially the author of them in his own person and
personality.

Also, socially: Mark Twain found himself all
at once in the midst of receptions, dinners, and speech-making;
all very exciting for a time at least, but not profitable,
not conducive to work. At a dinner of the Washington
Correspondents Club his response to the toast, “Women,”
was pronounced by Schuyler Colfax to be “the
best after dinner speech ever made.” Certainly
it was a refreshing departure from the prosy or clumsy-witted
efforts common to that period. He was coming altogether
into his own.—­[This is the first of Mark
Twain’s after-dinner speeches to be preserved.
The reader will find it complete, as reported next
day, in Appendix G, at the end of last volume.]

Page 203

He was not immediately interested in the matter of
book publication. The Jumping Frog book was popular,
and in England had been issued by Routledge; but the
royalty returns were modest enough and slow in arrival.
His desire was for prompter results. His interest
in book publication had never been an eager one, and
related mainly to the advertising it would furnish,
which he did not now need; or to the money return,
in which he had no great faith. Yet at this very
moment a letter for him was lying in the Tribune office
in New York which would bring the book idea into first
prominence and spell the beginning of his fortune.

Among those who had read and found delight in the
Tribune letters was Elisha Bliss, Jr., of the American
Publishing Company, of Hartford. Bliss was a
shrewd and energetic man, with a keen appreciation
for humor and the American fondness for that literary
quality. He had recently undertaken the management
of a Hartford concern, and had somewhat alarmed its
conservative directorate by publishing books that furnished
entertainment to the reader as well as moral instruction.
Only his success in paying dividends justified this
heresy and averted his downfall. Two days after
the arrival of the Quaker City Bliss wrote the letter
above mentioned. It ran as follows:

OfficeoftheAmericanpublishingco. Hartford, Conn., November
21, 1867.

Samuel L. Clemens, Esq., Tribune Office,
New York.

Dearsir,—­We take the liberty
to address you this, in place of a letter which we
had recently written and were about to forward to you,
not knowing your arrival home was expected so soon.
We are desirous of obtaining from you a work of some
kind, perhaps compiled from your letters from the
past, etc., with such interesting additions as
may be proper. We are the publishers of A. D.
Richardson’s works, and flatter ourselves that
we can give an author a favorable term and do as full
justice to his productions as any other house in the
country. We are perhaps the oldest subscription
house in the country, and have never failed to give
a book an immense circulation. We sold about 100,000
copies of Richardson’s F. D. and E. (’Field,
Dungeon and Escape’), and are now printing 41,000
of ‘Beyond the Mississippi’, and large
orders ahead. If you have any thought of writing
a book, or could be induced to do so, we should be
pleased to see you, and will do so. Will you do
us the favor of reply at once, at your earliest convenience.

Very truly
etc.,

E. Bliss,
Jr.,
Secretary.

After ten days’ delay this letter was forwarded
to the Tribune bureau in Washington, where Clemens
received it. He replied promptly.

Washington,
December 2, 1867.

E. Bliss, Jr., Esq., Secretary American
Publishing Co.

Page 204

Dearsir,—­I only received your
favor of November 21st last night, at the rooms of
the Tribune Bureau here. It was forwarded from
the Tribune office, New York where it had lain eight
or ten days. This will be a sufficient apology
for the seeming discourtesy of my silence.

I wrote fifty-two letters for the San Francisco Alta
California during the Quaker City excursion, about
half of which number have been printed thus far.
The Alta has few exchanges in the East, and I suppose
scarcely any of these letters have been copied on
this side of the Rocky Mountains. I could weed
them of their chief faults of construction and inelegancies
of expression, and make a volume that would be more
acceptable in many respects than any I could now write.
When those letters were written my impressions were
fresh, but now they have lost that freshness; they
were warm then, they are cold now. I could strike
out certain letters, and write new ones wherewith to
supply their places. If you think such a book
would suit your purpose, please drop me a line, specifying
the size and general style of the volume—­when
the matter ought to be ready; whether it should have
pictures in it or not; and particularly what your
terms with me would be, and what amount of money I
might possibly make out of it. The latter clause
has a degree of importance for me which is almost
beyond my own comprehension. But you understand
that, of course.

I have other propositions for a book, but have doubted
the propriety of interfering with good newspaper engagements,
except my way as an author could be demonstrated to
be plain before me. But I know Richardson, and
learned from him some months ago something of an idea
of the subscription plan of publishing. If that
is your plan invariably it looks safe.

I am on the New York Tribune staff here as an “occasional,”
among other
things, and a note from you addressed to
Very
truly, etc.,Sam.
L. Clemens,
New
York Tribune Bureau, Washington
will find me, without fail.

The exchange of those two letters marked the beginning
of one of the most notable publishing connections
in American literary history.

Consummation, however, was somewhat delayed.
Bliss was ill when the reply came, and could not write
again in detail until nearly a month later. In
this letter he recited the profits made by Richardson
and others through subscription publication, and named
the royalties paid. Richardson had received four
per cent. of the sale price, a small enough rate for
these later days; but the cost of manufacture was larger
then, and the sale and delivery of books through agents
has ever been an expensive process. Even Horace
Greeley had received but a fraction more on his Great
American Conflict. Bliss especially suggested
and emphasized a “humorous work—­that
is to say, a work humorously inclined.”
He added that they had two arrangements for paying
authors: outright purchase, and royalty.
He invited a meeting in New York to arrange terms.

Page 205

LXIV

OLIVIA LANGDON

Clemens did in fact go to New York that same evening,
to spend Christmas with Dan Slote, and missed Bliss’s
second letter. It was no matter. Fate had
his affairs properly in hand, and had prepared an event
of still larger moment than the publication even of
Innocents Abroad. There was a pleasant reunion
at Dan Slote’s. He wrote home about it:

Charley Langdon, Jack Van Nostrand,
Dan and I (all Quaker City night-hawks) had a
blow-out at Dan’s house and a lively talk over
old times. I just laughed till my sides ached
at some of our reminiscences. It was the
unholiest gang that ever cavorted through Palestine,
but those are the best boys in the world.

This, however, was not the event; it was only preliminary
to it. We are coming to that now. At the
old St. Nicholas Hotel, which stood on the west of
Broadway between Spring and Broome streets, there were
stopping at this time Jervis Langdon, a wealty coal-dealer
and mine-owner of Elmira, his son Charles and his
daughter Olivia, whose pictured face Samuel Clemens
had first seen in the Bay of Smyrna one September day.
Young Langdon had been especially anxious to bring
his distinguished Quaker City friend and his own people
together, and two days before Christmas Samuel Clemens
was invited to dine at the hotel. He went very
willingly. The lovely face of that miniature had
been often a part of his waking dreams. For the
first time now he looked upon its reality. Long
afterward he said:

“It is forty years ago. From that day to
this she has never been out of my mind.”

Charles Dickens was in New York then, and gave a reading
that night in Steinway Hall. The Langdons went,
and Samuel Clemens accompanied them. He remembered
afterward that Dickens wore a black velvet coat with
a fiery red flower in his buttonhole, and that he
read the storm scene from Copperfield—­the
death of James Steerforth. But he remembered still
more clearly the face and dress of that slender girlish
figure at his side.

Olivia Langdon was twenty-two years old at this time,
delicate as the miniature he had seen, fragile to
look upon, though no longer with the shattered health
of her girlhood. At sixteen, through a fall upon
the ice, she had become a complete invalid, confined
to her bed for two years, unable to sit, even when
supported, unable to lie in any position except upon
her back. Great physicians and surgeons, one after
another, had done their best for her but she had failed
steadily until every hope had died. Then, when
nothing else was left to try, a certain Doctor Newton,
of spectacular celebrity, who cured by “laying
on of hands,” was brought to Elmira to see her.
Doctor Newton came into the darkened room and said:

“Open the windows—­we must have light!”

Page 206

They protested that she could not bear the light,
but the windows were opened. Doctor Newton came
to the bedside of the helpless girl, delivered a short,
fervent prayer, put his arm under her shoulders, and
bade her sit up. She had not moved for two years,
and the family were alarmed, but she obeyed, and he
assisted her into a chair. Sensation came back
to her limbs. With his assistance she even made
a feeble attempt to walk. He left then, saying
that she would gradually improve, and in time be well,
though probably never very strong. On the same
day he healed a boy, crippled and drawn with fever.

It turned out as he had said. Olivia Langdon
improved steadily, and now at twenty-two, though not
robust—­she was never that—­she
was comparatively well. Gentle, winning, lovable,
she was the family idol, and Samuel Clemens joined
in their worship from the moment of that first meeting.

Olivia Langdon, on her part, was at first dazed and
fascinated, rather than attracted, by this astonishing
creature, so unlike any one she had ever known.
Her life had been circumscribed, her experiences of
a simple sort. She had never seen anything resembling
him before. Indeed, nobody had. Somewhat
carelessly, even if correctly, attired; eagerly, rather
than observantly, attentive; brilliant and startling,
rather than cultured, of speech—­a blazing
human solitaire, unfashioned, unset, tossed by the
drift of fortune at her feet. He disturbed rather
than gratified her. She sensed his heresy toward
the conventions and forms which had been her gospel;
his bantering, indifferent attitude toward life—­to
her always so serious and sacred; she suspected that
he even might have unorthodox views on matters of
religion. When he had gone she somehow had the
feeling that a great fiery meteor of unknown portent
had swept across her sky.

To her brother, who was eager for her approval of
his celebrity, Miss Langdon conceded admiration.
As for her father, he did not qualify his opinion.
With hearty sense of humor, and a keen perception of
verity and capability in men, Jervis Langdon accepted
Samuel Clemens from the start, and remained his stanch
admirer and friend. Clemens left that night with
an invitation to visit Elmira by and by, and with the
full intention of going—­soon. Fate,
however, had another plan. He did not see Elmira
for the better part of a year.

He saw Miss Langdon again within the week. On
New-Year’s Day he set forth to pay calls, after
the fashion of the time—­more lavish then
than now. Miss Langdon was receiving with Miss
Alice Hooker, a niece of Henry Ward Beecher, at the
home of a Mrs. Berry; he decided to go there first.
With young Langdon he arrived at eleven o’clock
in the morning, and they did not leave until midnight.
If his first impression upon Olivia Langdon had been
meteoric, it would seem that he must now have become
to her as a streaming comet that swept from zenith
to horizon. One thing is certain: she had

Page 207

become to him the single, unvarying beacon of his future
years. He visited Henry Ward Beecher on that trip
and dined with him by invitation. Harriet Beecher
Stowe was present, and others of that eminent family.
Likewise his old Quaker City comrades, Moses S. and
Emma Beach. It was a brilliant gathering, a conclave
of intellectual gods—­a triumph to be there
for one who had been a printer-boy on the banks of
the Mississippi, and only a little while before a miner
with pick and shovel. It was gratifying to be
so honored; it would be pleasant to write home; but
the occasion lacked something too —­everything,
in fact—­for when he ran his eye around the
board the face of the minature was not there.

Still there were compensations; inadequate, of course,
but pleasant enough to remember. It was Sunday
evening and the party adjourned to Plymouth Church.
After services Mr. Beecher invited him to return home
with him for a quiet talk. Evidently they had
a good time, for in the letter telling of these things
Samuel Clemens said: “Henry Ward Beecher
is a brick.”

LXV

A contractwithElishaBliss,
Jr.

He returned to Washington without seeing Miss Langdon
again, though he would seem to have had permission
to write—­friendly letters. A little
later (it was on the evening of January 9th) he lectured
in Washington —­on very brief notice indeed.
The arrangement for his appearance had been made by
a friend during his absence—­“a friend,”
Clemens declared afterward, “not entirely sober
at the time.” To his mother he wrote:

I scared up a doorkeeper and was ready at the proper
time, and by pure good luck a tolerably good house
assembled and I was saved. I hardly knew what
I was going to talk about, but it went off in splendid
style.

The title of the lecture delivered was “The
Frozen Truth”—­“more truth in
the title than in the lecture,” according to
his own statement. What it dealt with is not
remembered now. It had to do with the Quaker City
trip, perhaps, and it seems to have brought a financial
return which was welcome enough. Subsequently
he delivered it elsewhere; though just how far the
tour extended cannot be learned from the letters, and
he had but little memory of it in later years.

There was some further correspondence with Bliss,
then about the 21st of January (1868) Clemens made
a trip to Hartford to settle the matter. Bliss
had been particularly anxious to meet him, personally
and was a trifle disappointed with his appearance.
Mark Twain’s traveling costume was neither new
nor neat, and he was smoking steadily a pipe of power.
His general make-up was hardly impressive.

Bliss’s disturbance was momentary. Once
he began to talk the rest did not matter. He
was the author of those letters, and Bliss decided
that personally he was even greater than they.
The publisher, confined to his home with illness,
offered him the hospitality of his household.
Also, he made him two propositions: he would
pay him ten thousand dollars cash for his copyright,
or he would pay five per cent. royalty, which was a
fourth more than Richardson had received. He advised
the latter arrangement.

Page 208

Clemens had already taken advice and had discussed
the project a good deal with Richardson. The
ten thousand dollars was a heavy temptation, but he
withstood it and closed on the royalty basis—­“the
best business judgment I ever displayed,” he
was wont to declare. A letter written to his
mother and sister near the end of this Hartford stay
is worth quoting pretty fully here, for the information
and “character” it contains. It bears
date of January 24th.

This is a good week for me. I stopped
in the Herald office, as I came through New York,
to see the boys on the staff, and young James Gordon
Bennett asked me to write twice a week, impersonally,
for the Herald, and said if I would I might have
full swing, and about anybody and everything I
wanted to. I said I must have the very fullest
possible swing, and he said, “All right.”
I said, “It’s a contract—­”
and that settled that matter.

I’ll make it a point to write
one letter a week anyhow. But the best thing
that has happened is here. This great American
Publishing Company kept on trying to bargain with
me for a book till I thought I would cut the matter
short by coming up for a talk. I met Henry
Ward Beecher in Brooklyn, and with his usual whole-souled
way of dropping his own work to give other people
a lift when he gets a chance, he said: “Now,
here, you are one of the talented men of the age—­nobody
is going to deny that—­but in matters of
business I don’t suppose you know more than
enough to come in when it rains. I’ll
tell you what to do and how to do it.” And
he did.

And I listened well, and then came up
here and made a splendid contract for a Quaker
City book of 5 or 600 large pages, with illustrations,
the manuscript to be placed in the publisher’s
hands by the middle of July.—­[The contract
was not a formal one. There was an exchange
of letters agreeing to the terms, but no joint document
was drawn until October 16 (1868).]—­My percentage
is to be a fourth more than they have ever paid
any author except Greeley. Beecher will be
surprised, I guess, when he hears this.

These publishers get off the most tremendous
editions of their books you can imagine.
I shall write to the Enterprise and Alta every week,
as usual, I guess, and to the Herald twice a week,
occasionally to the Tribune and the magazines (I
have a stupid article in the Galaxy, just issued),
but I am not going to write to this and that and
the other paper any more.

I have had a tiptop time here for a
few days (guest of Mr. Jno. Hooker’s
family—­Beecher’s relatives—­in
a general way of Mr. Bliss also, who is head of
the publishing firm). Puritans are mighty straight-laced,
and they won’t let me smoke in the parlor, but
the Almighty don’t make any better people.

I have to make a speech at
the annual Herald dinner on the 6th of
May.

So the book, which would establish his claim to a
peerage in the literary land, was arranged for, and
it remained only to prepare the manuscript, a task
which he regarded as not difficult. He had only
to collate the Alta and Tribune letters, edit them,
and write such new matter as would be required for
completeness.

Page 209

Returning to Washington, he plunged into work with
his usual terrific energy, preparing the copy—­in
the mean time writing newspaper correspondence and
sketches that would bring immediate return. In
addition to his regular contributions, he entered into
a syndicate arrangement with John Swinton (brother
of William Swinton, the historian) to supply letters
to a list of newspapers.

“I have written seven long newspaper letters
and a short magazine article in less than two days,”
he wrote home, and by the end of January he had also
prepared several chapters of his book.

The San Francisco post-mastership was suggested to
him again, but he put the temptation behind him.
He refers to this more than once in his home letters,
and it is clear that he wavered.

Judge Field said if I wanted the place
he could pledge me the President’s appointment,
and Senator Corners said he would guarantee me
the Senate’s confirmation. It was a great
temptation, but it would render it impossible
to fill my book contract, and I had to drop the
idea....

And besides I did not want
the office.

He made this final decision when he heard that the
chief editor of the Alta wanted the place, and he
now threw his influence in that quarter. “I
would not take ten thousand dollars out of a friend’s
pocket,” he said.

But then suddenly came the news from Goodman that
the Alta publishers had copyrighted his Quaker City
letters and proposed getting them out in a book, to
reimburse themselves still further on their investment.
This was sharper than a serpent’s tooth.
Clemens got confirmation of the report by telegraph.
By the same medium he protested, but to no purpose.
Then he wrote a letter and sat down to wait. He
reported his troubles to Orion:

I have made a superb contract for a
book, and have prepared the first ten chapters
of the sixty or eighty, but I will bet it never sees
the light. Don’t you let the folks at home
hear that. That thieving Alta copyrighted
the letters, and now shows no disposition to let
me use them. I have done all I can by telegraph,
and now await the final result by mail. I
only charged them for 50 letters what (even in)
greenbacks would amount to less than two thousand
dollars, intending to write a good deal for high-priced
Eastern papers, and now they want to publish my
letters in book form themselves to get back that
pitiful sum.

Orion was by this time back from Nevada, setting type
in St. Louis. He was full of schemes, as usual,
and his brother counsels him freely. Then he
says:

We chase phantoms half the
days of our lives. It is well if we
learn wisdom even then, and
save the other half.

I am in for it. I must
go on chasing them, until I marry, then I am
done with literature and all
other bosh—­that is, literature
wherewith to please the general
public.

Page 210

I shall write to please myself
then.

He closes by saying that he rather expects to go with
Anson Burlingame on the Chinese embassy. Clearly
he was pretty hopeless as to his book prospects.

His first meeting with General Grant occurred just
at this time. In one of his home letters he mentions,
rather airily, that he will drop in someday on the
General for an interview; and at last, through Mrs.
Grant, an appointment was made for a Sunday evening
when the General would be at home. He was elated
with the prospect of an interview; but when he looked
into the imperturbable, square, smileless face of the
soldier he found himself, for the first time in his
life, without anything particular to say. Grant
nodded slightly and waited. His caller wished
something would happen. It did. His inspiration
returned.

“General,” he said, “I seem to be
a little embarrassed. Are you?”

That broke the ice. There were no further difficulties.—­[Mark
Twain has variously related this incident. It
is given here in accordance with the letters of the
period.]

LXVI

BACK TO SAN FRANCISCO

Reply came from the Alta, but it was not promising.
It spoke rather vaguely of prior arrangements and
future possibilities. Clemens gathered that under
certain conditions he might share in the profits of
the venture. There was but one thing to do; he
knew those people—­some of them—­Colonel
McComb and a Mr. McCrellish intimately. He must
confer with them in person.

He was weary of Washington, anyway. The whole
pitiful machinery of politics disgusted him.
In his notebook he wrote:

Whiskey is taken into the
committee rooms in demijohns and carried
out in demagogues.

And in a letter:

This is a place to get a poor opinion
of everybody in. There are some pitiful intellects
in this Congress! There isn’t one man in
Washington in civil office who has the brains of
Anson Burlingame, and I suppose if China had not
seized and saved his great talents to the world
this government would have discarded him when his time
was up.—­[Anson Burlingame had by this
time become China’s special ambassador to
the nations.]

Furthermore, he was down on the climate of Washington.
He decided to go to San Francisco and see “those
Alta thieves face to face.” Then, if a
book resulted, he could prepare it there among friends.
Also, he could lecture.

He had been anxious to visit his people before sailing,
but matters were too urgent to permit delay.
He obtained from Bliss an advance of royalty and took
passage, by way of Aspinwall, on the sidewheel steamer
Henry Chauncey, a fine vessel for those days.
The name of Mark Twain was already known on the isthmus,
and when it was learned he had arrived on the Chauncey
a delegation welcomed him on the wharf, and provided
him with refreshments and entertainment. Mr.

Page 211

Tracy Robinson, a poet, long a resident of that southern
land, was one of the group. Beyond the isthmus
Clemens fell in again with his old captain, Ned Wakeman,
who during the trip told him the amazing dream that
in due time would become Captain Stormfield’s
Visit to Heaven. He made the first draft of this
story soon after his arrival in San Francisco, as
a sort of travesty of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s
Gates Ajar, then very popular. Clemens, then and
later, had a high opinion of Capt. Ned Wakeman’s
dream, but his story of it would pass through several
stages before finally reaching the light of publication.—­[Mr.
John P. Vollmer, now of Lewiston, Idaho, a companion
of that voyage, writes of a card game which took place
beyond the isthmus. The notorious crippled gambler,
“Smithy,” figured in it, and it would
seem to have furnished the inspiration for the exciting
story in Chapter XXXVI of the Mississippi book.]

In San Francisco matters turned out as he had hoped.
Colonel McComb was his stanch friend; McCrellish and
Woodward, the proprietors, presently conceded that
they had already received good value for the money
paid. The author agreed to make proper acknowledgments
to the Alta in his preface, and the matter was settled
with friendliness all around.

The way was now clear, the book assured. First,
however, he must provide himself with funds.
He delivered a lecture, with the Quaker City excursion
as his subject. On the 5th of May he wrote to
Bliss:

I lectured here on the trip the other night; over
$1,600 in gold in the house; every seat taken and
paid for before night.

He reports that he is steadily at work, and expects
to start East with the completed manuscript about
the middle of June.

But this was a miscalculation. Clemens found
that the letters needed more preparation than he had
thought. His literary vision and equipment had
vastly altered since the beginning of that correspondence.
Some of the chapters he rewrote; others he eliminated
entirely. It required two months of fairly steady
work to put the big manuscript together.

Some of the new chapters he gave to Bret Harte for
the Overland Monthly, then recently established.
Harte himself was becoming a celebrity about this
time. His “Luck of Roaring Camp” and
“The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” published
in early numbers of the Overland, were making a great
stir in the East, arousing there a good deal more
enthusiasm than in the magazine office or the city
of their publication. That these two friends,
each supreme in his own field, should have entered
into their heritage so nearly at the same moment,
is one of the many seemingly curious coincidences
of literary history.

Page 212

Clemens now concluded to cover his lecture circuit
of two years before. He was assured that it would
be throwing away a precious opportunity not to give
his new lecture to his old friends. The result
justified that opinion. At Virginia, at Carson,
and elsewhere he was received like a returned conqueror.
He might have been accorded a Roman triumph had there
been time and paraphernalia. Even the robbers
had reformed, and entire safety was guaranteed him
on the Divide between Virginia and Gold Hill.
At Carson he called on Mrs. Curry, as in the old days,
and among other things told her how snow from the
Lebanon Mountains is brought to Damascus on the backs
of camels.

“Sam,” she said, “that’s just
one of your yarns, and if you tell it in your lecture
to-night I’ll get right up and say so.”

But he did tell it, for it was a fact; and though
Mrs. Curry did not rise to deny it she shook her finger
at him in a way he knew.

He returned to San Francisco and gave one more lecture,
the last he would ever give in California. His
preparatory advertising for that occasion was wholly
unique, characteristic of him to the last degree.
It assumed the form of a handbill of protest, supposed
to have been issued by the foremost citizens of San
Francisco, urging him to return to the States without
inflicting himself further upon them. As signatures
he made free with the names of prominent individuals,
followed by those of organizations, institutions,
“Various Benevolent Societies, Citizens on Foot
and Horseback, and fifteen hundred in the Steerage.”

Following this (on the same bill) was his reply, “To
the fifteen hundred and others,” in which he
insisted on another hearing:

I will torment the people if I want
to.... It only costs the people $1 apiece,
and if they can’t stand it what do they stay
here for?... My last lecture was not as fine
as I thought it was, but I have submitted this
discourse to several able critics, and they have pronounced
it good. Now, therefore, why should I withhold
it?

He promised positively to sail on the 6th of July
if they would let him talk just this once. Continuing,
the handbill presented a second protest, signed by
the various clubs and business firms; also others
bearing variously the signatures of the newspapers,
and the clergy, ending with the brief word:

You had better go. Yours,
chiefofpolice.

All of which drollery concluded with his announcement
of place and date of his lecture, with still further
gaiety at the end. Nothing short of a seismic
cataclysm—­an earthquake, in fact—­could
deter a San Francisco audience after that. Mark
Twain’s farewell address, given at the Mercantile
Library July 2 (1868), doubtless remains today the
leading literary event in San Francisco’s history.—­[Copy
of the lecture announcement, complete, will be found
in Appendix H, at the end of last volume.]

Page 213

He sailed July 6th by the Pacific mail steamer Montana
to Acapulco, caught the Henry Chauncey at Aspinwall,
reached New York on the 28th, and a day or two later
had delivered his manuscript at Hartford.

But a further difficulty had arisen. Bliss was
having troubles himself, this time, with his directors.
Many reports of Mark Twain’s new book had been
traveling the rounds of the press, some of which declared
it was to be irreverent, even blasphemous, in tone.
The title selected, The New Pilgrim’s Progress,
was in itself a sacrilege. Hartford was a conservative
place; the American Publishing Company directors were
of orthodox persuasion. They urged Bliss to relieve
the company of this impending disaster of heresy.
When the author arrived one or more of them labored
with him in person, without avail. As for Bliss,
he was stanch; he believed in the book thoroughly,
from every standpoint. He declared if the company
refused to print it he would resign the management
and publish the book himself. This was an alarming
suggestion to the stockholders. Bliss had returned
dividends—­a boon altogether too rare in
the company’s former history. The objectors
retired and were heard of no more. The manuscript
was placed in the hands of Fay and Cox, illustrators,
with an order for about two hundred and fifty pictures.

Fay and Cox turned it over to True Williams, one of
the well-known illustrators of that day. Williams
was a man of great talent—­of fine imagination
and sweetness of spirit—­but it was necessary
to lock him in a room when industry was required,
with nothing more exciting than cold water as a beverage.
Clemens himself aided in the illustrating by obtaining
of Moses S. Beach photographs from the large collection
he had brought home.

LXVII

A VISIT TO ELMIRA

Meantime he had skilfully obtained a renewal of the
invitation to spend a week in the Langdon home.

He meant to go by a fast train, but, with his natural
gift for misunderstanding time-tables, of course took
a slow one, telegraphing his approach from different
stations along the road. Young Langdon concluded
to go down the line as far as Waverly to meet him.
When the New York train reached there the young man
found his guest in the smoking-car, travel-stained
and distressingly clad. Mark Twain was always
scrupulously neat and correct of dress in later years,
but in that earlier day neatness and style had not
become habitual and did not give him comfort.
Langdon greeted him warmly but with doubt. Finally
he summoned courage to say, hesitatingly—­“You’ve
got some other clothes, haven’t you?”

The arriving guest was not in the least disturbed.

“Oh yes,” he said with enthusiasm, “I’ve
got a fine brand-new outfit in this bag, all but a
hat. It will be late when we get in, and I won’t
see any one to-night. You won’t know me
in the morning. We’ll go out early and
get a hat.”

Page 214

This was a large relief to the younger man, and the
rest of the journey was happy enough. True to
promise, the guest appeared at daylight correctly,
even elegantly clad, and an early trip to the shops
secured the hat. A gay and happy week followed—­a
week during which Samuel Clemens realized more fully
than ever that in his heart there was room for only
one woman in all the world: Olivia Langdon—­“Livy,”
as they all called her—­and as the day of
departure drew near it may be that the gentle girl
had made some discoveries, too.

No word had passed between them. Samuel Clemens
had the old-fashioned Southern respect for courtship
conventions, and for what, in that day at least, was
regarded as honor. On the morning of the final
day he said to young Langdon:

“Charley, my week is up, and I must go home.”

The young man expressed a regret which was genuine
enough, though not wholly unqualified. His older
sister, Mrs. Crane, leaving just then for a trip to
the White Mountains, had said:

“Charley, I am sure Mr. Clemens is after our
Livy. You mustn’t let him carry her off
before our return.”

The idea was a disturbing one. The young man
did not urge his guest to prolong his-visit.
He said:

“We’ll have to stand it, I guess, but
you mustn’t leave before to-night.”

“I ought to go by the first train,” Clemens
said, gloomily. “I am in love.”

“In what!”

“In love-with your sister, and I ought to get
away from here.”

The young man was now very genuinely alarmed.
To him Mark Twain was a highly gifted, fearless, robust
man—­a man’s man—­and as
such altogether admirable—­lovable.
But Olivia—­Livy—­she was to him
little short of a saint. No man was good enough
for her, certainly not this adventurous soldier of
letters from the West. Delightful he was beyond
doubt, adorable as a companion, but not a companion
for Livy.

“Look here, Clemens,” he said, when he
could get his voice. “There’s a train
in half an hour. I’ll help you catch it.
Don’t wait till to-night. Go now.”

Clemens shook his head.

“No, Charley,” he said, in his gentle
drawl, “I want to enjoy your hospitality a little
longer. I promise to be circumspect, and I’ll
go to-night.”

That night, after dinner, when it was time to take
the New York train, a light two-seated wagon was at
the gate. The coachman was in front, and young
Langdon and his guest took the back seat. For
some reason the seat had not been locked in its place,
and when, after the good-bys, the coachman touched
the horse it made a quick spring forward, and the back
seat, with both passengers, described a half-circle
and came down with force on the cobbled street.
Neither passenger was seriously hurt; Clemens not
at all—­only dazed a little for a moment.
Then came an inspiration; here was a chance to prolong
his visit. Evidently it was not intended that
he should take that train. When the Langdon household
gathered around with restoratives he did not recover
too quickly. He allowed them to support or carry
him into the house and place him in an arm-chair and
apply remedies. The young daughter of the house
especially showed anxiety and attention. This
was pure happiness. He was perjuring himself,
of course, but they say Jove laughs at such things.

Page 215

He recovered in a day or two, but the wide hospitality
of the handsome Langdon home was not only offered
now; it was enforced. He was still there two
weeks later, after which he made a trip to Cleveland
to confide in Mrs. Fairbanks how he intended to win
Livy Langdon for his wife.

LXVIII

THE REV. “JOE” TWICHELL

He returned to Hartford to look after the progress
of his book. Some of it was being put into type,
and with his mechanical knowledge of such things he
was naturally interested in the process.

He made his headquarters with the Blisses, then living
at 821 Asylum Avenue, and read proof in a little upper
room, where the lamp was likely to be burning most
of the time, where the atmosphere was nearly always
blue with smoke, and the window-sill full of cigar
butts. Mrs. Bliss took him into the quiet social
life of the neighborhood—­to small church
receptions, society gatherings and the like—­all
of which he seemed to enjoy. Most of the dwellers
in that neighborhood were members of the Asylum Hill
Congregational Church, then recently completed; all
but the spire. It was a cultured circle, well-off
in the world’s goods, its male members, for
the most part, concerned in various commercial ventures.

The church stood almost across the way from the Bliss
home, and Mark Twain, with his picturesque phrasing,
referred to it as the “stub-tailed church,”
on account of its abbreviated spire; also, later, with
a knowledge of its prosperous membership, as the “Church
of the Holy Speculators.” He was at an
evening reception in the home of one of its members
when he noticed a photograph of the unfinished building
framed and hanging on the wall.

“Why, yes,” he commented, in his slow
fashion, “this is the ’Church of the Holy
Speculators.’”

“Sh,” cautioned Mrs. Bliss. “Its
pastor is just behind you. He knows your work
and wants to meet you.” Turning, she said:
“Mr. Twichell, this is Mr. Clemens. Most
people know him as Mark Twain.”

And so, in this casual fashion, he met the man who
was presently to become his closest personal friend
and counselor, and would remain so for more than forty
years.

Joseph Hopkins Twichell was a man about his own age,
athletic and handsome, a student and a devout Christian,
yet a man familiar with the world, fond of sports,
with an exuberant sense of humor and a wide understanding
of the frailties of humankind. He had been “port
waist oar” at Yale, and had left college to
serve with General “Dan” Sickles as a
chaplain who had followed his duties not only in the
camp, but on the field.

Page 216

Mention has already been made of Mark Twain’s
natural leaning toward ministers of the gospel, and
the explanation of it is easier to realize than to
convey. He was hopelessly unorthodox—­rankly
rebellious as to creeds. Anything resembling
cant or the curtailment of mental liberty roused only
his resentment and irony. Yet something in his
heart always warmed toward any laborer in the vineyard,
and if we could put the explanation into a single
sentence, perhaps we might say it was because he could
meet them on that wide, common ground sympathy with
mankind. Mark Twain’s creed, then and always,
may be put into three words, “liberty, justice,
humanity.” It may be put into one word,
“humanity.”

Ministers always loved Mark Twain. They did not
always approve of him, but they adored him: The
Rev. Mr. Rising, of the Comstock, was an early example
of his ministerial friendships, and we have seen that
Henry Ward Beecher cultivated his company. In
a San Francisco letter of two years before, Mark Twain
wrote his mother, thinking it would please her:

I am as thick as thieves with the Reverend Stebbins.
I am laying for the Reverend Scudder and the Reverend
Doctor Stone. I am running on preachers now altogether,
and I find them gay.

So it may be that his first impulse toward Joseph
Twichell was due to the fact that he was a young member
of that army whose mission is to comfort and uplift
mankind. But it was only a little time till the
impulse had grown into a friendship that went beyond
any profession or doctrine, a friendship that ripened
into a permanent admiration and love for “Joe”
Twichell himself, as one of the noblest specimens of
his race.

He was invited to the Twichell home, where he met
the young wife and got a glimpse of the happiness
of that sweet and peaceful household. He had
a neglected, lonely look, and he loved to gather with
them at their fireside. He expressed his envy
of their happiness, and Mrs. Twichell asked him why,
since his affairs were growing prosperous, he did not
establish a household of his own. Long afterward
Mr. Twichell wrote:

Mark made no answer for a little, but,
with his eyes bent on the floor, appeared to be
deeply pondering. Then he looked up, and said
slowly, in a voice tremulous with earnestness (with
what sympathy he was heard may be imagined):
“I am taking thought of it. I am in love
beyond all telling with the dearest and best girl in
the whole world. I don’t suppose she
will marry me. I can’t think it possible.
She ought not to. But if she doesn’t I shall
be sure that the best thing I ever did was to
fall in love with her, and proud to have it known
that I tried to win her!”

It was only a brief time until the Twichell fireside
was home to him. He came and went, and presently
it was “Mark” and “Joe,” as
by and by it would be “Livy” and “Harmony,”
and in a few years “Uncle Joe” and “Uncle
Mark,” “Aunt Livy” and “Aunt
Harmony,” and so would remain until the end.

Page 217

LXIX

A LECTURE TOUR

James Redpath, proprietor of the Boston Lyceum Bureau,
was the leading lecture agent of those days, and controlled
all, or nearly all, of the platform celebrities.
Mark Twain’s success at the Cooper Union the
year before had interested Redpath. He had offered
engagements then and later, but Clemens had not been
free for the regular circuit. Now there was no
longer a reason for postponement of a contract.
Redpath was eager for the new celebrity, and Clemens
closed with him for the season of 1868-9. With
his new lecture, “The Vandal Abroad,” he
was presently earning a hundred dollars and more a
night, and making most of the nights count.

This was affluence indeed. He had become suddenly
a person of substance-an associate of men of consequence,
with a commensurate income. He could help his
mother lavishly now, and he did.

His new lecture was immensely popular. It was
a resume of the ’Quaker City’ letters—­a
foretaste of the book which would presently follow.
Wherever he went, he was hailed with eager greetings.
He caught such drifting exclamations as, “There
he is! There goes Mark Twain!” People came
out on the street to see him pass. That marvelous
miracle which we variously call “notoriety,”
“popularity,” “fame,” had come
to him. In his notebook he wrote, “Fame
is a vapor, popularity an accident; the only, earthly
certainty oblivion.”

The newspapers were filled with enthusiasm both as
to his matter and method. His delivery was described
as a “long, monotonous drawl, with the fun invariably
coming in at the end of a sentence—­after
a pause.” His appearance at this time is
thus set down:

Mark Twain is a man of medium height,
about five feet ten, sparsely built, with dark
reddish-brown hair and mustache. His features
are fair, his eyes keen and twinkling. He
dresses in scrupulous evening attire. In
lecturing he hangs about the desk, leaning on it or
flirting around the corners of it, then marching
and countermarching in the rear of it. He
seldom casts a glance at his manuscript.

No doubt this fairly presents Mark Twain, the lecturer
of that day. It was a new figure on the platform,
a man with a new method. As to his manuscript,
the item might have said that he never consulted it
at all. He learned his lecture; what he consulted
was merely a series of hieroglyphics, a set of crude
pictures drawn by himself, suggestive of the subject-matter
underneath new head. Certain columns represented
the Parthenon; the Sphinx meant Egypt, and so on.
His manuscript lay there in case of accident, but
the accident did not happen.

A number of his engagements were in the central part
of New York, at points not far distant from Elmira.
He had a standing invitation to visit the Langdon
home, and he made it convenient to avail himself of
that happiness.

Page 218

His was not an unruffled courtship. When at last
he reached the point of proposing for the daughter
of the house, neither the daughter nor the household
offered any noticeable encouragement to his suit.
Many absurd anecdotes have been told of his first
interview with Mr. Langdon on the subject, but they
are altogether without foundation. It was a proper
and dignified discussion of a very serious matter.
Mr. Langdon expressed deep regard for him and friendship
but he was not inclined to add him to the family;
the young lady herself, in a general way, accorded
with these views. The applicant for favor left
sadly enough, but he could not remain discouraged
or sad. He lectured at Cleveland with vast success,
and the news of it traveled quickly to Elmira.
He was referred to by Cleveland papers as a “lion”
and “the coming man of the age.” Two
days later, in Pittsburgh (November 19th), he “played”
against Fanny Kemble, the favorite actress of that
time, with the result that Miss Kemble had an audience
of two hundred against nearly ten times the number
who gathered to hear Mark Twain. The news of
this went to Elmira, too. It was in the papers
there next morning; surely this was a conquering hero
—­a gay Lochinvar from out of the West—­and
the daughter of the house must be guarded closely,
that he did not bear her away. It was on the
second morning following the Pittsburgh triumph, when
the Langdon family were gathered at breakfast, that
a bushy auburn head poked fearfully in at the door,
and a low, humble voice said:

“The calf has returned; may the prodigal have
some breakfast?”

No one could be reserved or reprovingly distant, or
any of those unfriendly things with a person like
that; certainly not Jervis Langdon, who delighted
in the humor and the tricks and turns and oddities
of this eccentric visitor. Giving his daughter
to him was another matter, but even that thought was
less disturbing than it had been at the start.
In truth, the Langdon household had somehow grown
to feel that he belonged to them. The elder sister’s
husband, Theodore Crane, endorsed him fully.
He had long before read some of the Mark Twain sketches
that had traveled eastward in advance of their author,
and had recognized, even in the crudest of them, a
classic charm. As for Olivia Langdon’s mother
and sister, their happiness lay in hers. Where
her heart went theirs went also, and it would appear
that her heart, in spite of herself, had found its
rightful keeper. Only young Langdon was irreconciled,
and eventually set out for a voyage around the world
to escape the situation.

There was only a provisional engagement at first.
Jervis Langdon suggested, and Samuel Clemens agreed
with him, that it was proper to know something of
his past, as well as of his present, before the official
parental sanction should be given. When Mr. Langdon
inquired as to the names of persons of standing to
whom he might write for credentials, Clemens pretty
confidently gave him the name of the Reverend Stebbins
and others of San Francisco, adding that he might
write also to Joe Goodman if he wanted to, but that
he had lied for Goodman a hundred times and Goodman
would lie for him if necessary, so his testimony would
be of no value. The letters to the clergy were
written, and Mr. Langdon also wrote one on his own
account.

Page 219

It was a long mail-trip to the Coast and back in those
days. It might be two months before replies would
come from those ministers. The lecturer set out
again on his travels, and was radiantly and happily
busy. He went as far west as Illinois, had crowded
houses in Chicago, visited friends and kindred in
Hannibal, St. Louis, and Keokuk, carrying the great
news, and lecturing in old familiar haunts.

LXX

Innocentsathome—­and
“Theinnocentsabroad”

He was in Jacksonville, Illinois, at the end of January
(1869), and in a letter to Bliss states that he will
be in Elmira two days later, and asks that proofs
of the book be sent there. He arrived at the Langdon
home, anxious to hear the reports that would make
him, as the novels might say, “the happiest
or the most miserable of men.” Jervis Langdon
had a rather solemn look when they were alone together.
Clemens asked:

“You’ve heard from those gentlemen out
there?”

“Yes, and from another gentleman I wrote concerning
you.”

“They don’t appear to have been very enthusiastic,
from your manner.”

“Well, yes, some of them were.”

“I suppose I may ask what particular form their
emotion took?”

“Oh yes, yes; they agree unanimously that you
are a brilliant, able man, a man with a future, and
that you would make about the worst husband on record.”

The applicant for favor had a forlorn look.

“There’s nothing very evasive about that,”
he said:

There was a period of reflective silence. It
was probably no more than a few seconds, but it seemed
longer.

“Haven’t you any other friend that you
could suggest?” Langdon said.

“Apparently none whose testimony would be valuable.”

Jervis Langdon held out his hand. “You
have at least one,” he said. “I believe
in you. I know you better than they do.”

And so came the crown of happiness. The engagement
of Samuel Langhorne
Clemens and Olivia Lewis Langdon was ratified next
day, February 4, 1869.

But if the friends of Mark Twain viewed the idea of
the marriage with scant favor, the friends of Miss
Langdon regarded it with genuine alarm. Elmira
was a conservative place—­a place of pedigree
and family tradition; that a stranger, a former printer,
pilot, miner, wandering journalist and lecturer, was
to carry off the daughter of one of the oldest and
wealthiest families, was a thing not to be lightly
permitted. The fact that he had achieved a national
fame did not count against other considerations.
The social protest amounted almost to insurrection,
but it was not availing. The Langdon family had
their doubts too, though of a different sort.
Their doubts lay in the fear that one, reared as their
daughter had been, might be unable to hold a place
as the wife of this intellectual giant, whom they
felt that the world was preparing to honor. That
this delicate, sheltered girl could have the strength
of mind and body for her position seemed hard to believe.
Their faith overbore such questionings, and the future
years proved how fully it was justified.

Page 220

To his mother Samuel Clemens wrote:

She is only a little body, but she hasn’t
her peer in Christendom. I gave her only
a plain gold engagement ring, when fashion imperatively
demands a two-hundred-dollar diamond one, and told
her it was typical of her future life-namely,
that she would have to flourish on substance,
rather than luxuries (but you see I know the girl—­she
don’t care anything about luxuries)....
She spends no money but her astral year’s
allowance, and spends nearly every cent of that
on other people. She will be a good, sensible
little wife, without any airs about her.
I don’t make intercession for her beforehand,
and ask you to love her, for there isn’t any
use in that—­you couldn’t help
it if you were to try. I warn you that whoever
comes within the fatal influence of her beautiful nature
is her willing slave forevermore.

To Mrs. Crane, absent in March, her father wrote:

Dearsue,—­I received
your letter yesterday with a great deal of pleasure,
but the letter has gone in pursuit of one S. L. Clemens,
who has been giving us a great deal of trouble
lately. We cannot have a joy in our family
without a feeling, on the part of the little incorrigible
in our family, that this wanderer must share it, so,
as soon as read, into her pocket and off upstairs goes
your letter, and in the next two minutes into
the mail, so it is impossible for me now to refer
to it, or by reading it over gain an inspiration
in writing you. . .

Clemens closed his lecture tour in March, acid went
immediately to Elmira. He had lectured between
fifty and sixty times, with a return of something
more than $8,000, not a bad aggregate for a first season
on the circuit. He had planned to make a spring
tour to California, but the attraction at Elmira was
of a sort that discouraged distant travel. Furthermore,
he disliked the platform, then and always. It
was always a temptation to him because of its quick
and abundant return, but it was none the less distasteful.
In a letter of that spring he wrote:

I most cordially hate the lecture field.
And after all, I shudder to think I may never
get out of it. In all conversation with Gough,
and Anna Dickinson, Nasby, Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Wendell Phillips, and the other old stagers, I
could not observe that they ever expected or hoped
to get out of the business. I don’t want
to get wedded to it as they are.

He declined further engagements on the excuse that
he must attend to getting out his book. The revised
proofs were coming now, and he and gentle Livy Langdon
read them together. He realized presently that
with her sensitive nature she had also a keen literary
perception. What he lacked in delicacy—­and
his lack was likely to be large enough in that direction—­she
detected, and together they pruned it away. She
became his editor during those happy courtship days—­a
position which she held to her death. The world

Page 221

owed a large debt of gratitude to Mark Twain’s
wife, who from the very beginning—­and always,
so far as in her strength she was able—­inspired
him to give only his worthiest to the world, whether
in written or spoken word, in counsel or in deed.
Those early days of their close companionship, spiritual
and mental, were full of revelation to Samuel Clemens,
a revelation that continued from day to day, and from
year to year, even to the very end.

The letter to Bliss and the proofs were full of suggested
changes that would refine and beautify the text.
In one of them he settles the question of title, which
he says is to be:

Theinnocentsabroad
orthenewpilgrim’sprogress

and we may be sure that it was Olivia Langdon’s
voice that gave the deciding vote for the newly adopted
chief title, which would take any suggestion of irreverence
out of the remaining words.

The book was to have been issued in the spring, but
during his wanderings proofs had been delayed, and
there was now considerable anxiety about it, as the
agencies had become impatient for the canvass.
At the end of April Clemens wrote: “Your
printers are doing well. I will hurry the proofs”;
but it was not until the early part of June that the
last chapters were revised and returned. Then
the big book, at last completed, went to press on
an edition of twenty thousand, a large number for
any new book, even to-day.

In later years, through some confusion of circumstance,
Mark Twain was led to believe that the publication
of The Innocents Abroad was long and unnecessarily
delayed. But this was manifestly a mistake.
The book went to press in June. It was a big
book and a large edition. The first copy was
delivered July 20 (1869), and four hundred and seventeen
bound volumes were shipped that month. Even with
the quicker mechanical processes of to-day a month
or more is allowed for a large book between the final
return of proofs and the date of publication.
So it is only another instance of his remembering,
as he once quaintly put it, “the thing that
didn’t happen.”—­[In an article
in the North American Review (September 21, 1906)
Mr. Clemens stated that he found it necessary to telegraph
notice that he would bring suit if the book was not
immediately issued. In none of the letters covering
this period is there any suggestion of delay on the
part of the publishers, and the date of the final
return of proofs, together with the date of publication,
preclude the possibility of such a circumstance.
At some period of his life he doubtless sent, or contemplated
sending, such a message, and this fact, through some
curious psychology, became confused in his mind with
the first edition of The Innocents Abroad.]

LXXI

THE GREAT BOOK OF TRAVEL

Page 222

‘The Innocents Abroad’ was a success from
the start. The machinery for its sale and delivery
was in full swing by August 1, and five thousand one
hundred and seventy copies were disposed of that month—­a
number that had increased to more than thirty-one
thousand by the first of the year. It was a book
of travel; its lowest price was three and a half dollars.
No such record had been made by a book of that description;
none has equaled it since.—­[One must recall
that this was the record only up to 1910. D.W.]

If Mark Twain was not already famous, he was unquestionably
famous now. As the author of The New Pilgrim’s
Progress he was swept into the domain of letters as
one riding at the head of a cavalcade—­doors
and windows wide with welcome and jubilant with applause.
Newspapers chorused their enthusiasm; the public voiced
universal approval; only a few of the more cultured
critics seemed hesitant and doubtful.

They applauded—­most of them—­but
with reservation. Doctor Holland regarded Mark
Twain as a mere fun maker of ephemeral popularity,
and was not altogether pleasant in his dictum.
Doctor Holmes, in a letter to the author, speaks of
the “frequently quaint and amusing conceits,”
but does not find it in his heart to refer to the
book as literature. It was naturally difficult
for the East to concede a serious value to one who
approached his subject with such militant aboriginality,
and occasionally wrote “those kind.”
William Dean Howells reviewed the book in the Atlantic,
which was of itself a distinction, whether the review
was favorable or otherwise. It was favorable
on the whole, favorable to the humor of the book,
its “delicious impudence,” the charm of
its good-natured irony. The review closed:

It is no business of ours to fix his
rank among the humorists California has given
us, but we think he is, in an entirely different
way from all the others, quite worthy of the company
of the best.

This is praise, but not of an intemperate sort, nor
very inclusive. The descriptive, the poetic,
the more pretentious phases of the book did not receive
attention. Mr. Howells was perhaps the first critic
of eminence to recognize in Mark Twain not only the
humorist, but the supreme genius-the “Lincoln
of our literature.” This was later.
The public—­the silent public—­with
what Howells calls “the inspired knowledge of
the simple-hearted multitude,” reached a similar
verdict forthwith. And on sufficient evidence:
let the average unprejudiced person of to-day take
up the old volume and read a few chapters anywhere
and decide whether it is the work of a mere humorist,
or also of a philosopher, a poet, and a seer.
The writer well remembers a little group of “the
simple-hearted multitude” who during the winter
of ’69 and ’70 gathered each evening to
hear the Innocents read aloud, and their unanimous
verdict that it was the “best book of modern
times.”

It was the most daring book of its day. Passages
of it were calculated to take the breath of the orthodox
reader; only, somehow, it made him smile, too.
It was all so good-natured, so openly sincere.
Without doubt it preached heresy—­the heresy
of viewing revered landmarks and relics joyously,
rather than lugubriously; reverentially, when they
inspired reverence; satirically, when they invited
ridicule, and with kindliness always.

Page 223

The Innocents Abroad is Mark Twain’s greatest
book of travel. The critical and the pure in
speech may object to this verdict. Brander Matthews
regards it second to A Tramp Abroad, the natural viewpoint
of the literary technician. The ‘Tramp’
contains better usage without doubt, but it lacks
the “color” which gives the Innocents its
perennial charm. In the Innocents there is a
glow, a fragrance, a romance of touch, a subtle something
which is idyllic, something which is not quite of
reality, in the tale of that little company that so
long ago sailed away to the harbors of their illusions
beyond the sea, and, wandered together through old
palaces and galleries, and among the tombs of the
saints, and down through ancient lands. There
is an atmosphere about it all, a dream-like quality
that lies somewhere in the telling, maybe, or in the
tale; at all events it is there, and the world has
felt it ever since. Perhaps it could be defined
in a single word, perhaps that word would be “youth.”
That the artist, poor True Williams, felt its inspiration
is certain. We may believe that Williams was not
a great draftsman, but no artist ever caught more
perfectly the light and spirit of the author’s
text. Crude some of the pictures are, no doubt,
but they convey the very essence of the story; they
belong to it, they are a part of it, and they ought
never to perish. ‘A Tramp Abroad’
is a rare book, but it cannot rank with its great
predecessor in human charm. The public, which
in the long run makes mistakes, has rendered that verdict.
The Innocents by far outsells the Tramp, and, for that
matter, any other book of travel. Thepurchaseof A paper

It is curious to reflect that Mark Twain still did
not regard himself as a literary man. He had
no literary plans for the future; he scarcely looked
forward to the publication of another book. He
considered himself a journalist; his ambition lay
in the direction of retirement in some prosperous
newspaper enterprise, with the comforts and companionship
of a home. During his travels he had already
been casting about for a congenial and substantial
association in newspaperdom, and had at one time considered
the purchase of an interest in the Cleveland Herald.
But Buffalo was nearer Elmira, and when an opportunity
offered, by which he could acquire a third interest
in the Buffalo Express for $25,000, the purchase was
decided upon. His lack of funds prompted a new
plan for a lecture tour to the Pacific coast, this
time with D. R. Locke (Nasby), then immensely popular,
in his lecture “Cussed Be Canaan.”

Clemens had met Nasby on the circuit, and was very
fond of him. The two had visited Boston together,
and while there had called on Doctor Holmes; this
by the way. Nasby was fond of Clemens too, but
doubtful about the trip-doubtful about his lecture:

Page 224

Your proposition takes my breath away.
If I had my new lecture completed I wouldn’t
hesitate a moment, but really isn’t “Cussed
Be Canaan” too old? You know that lemon,
our African brother, juicy as he was in his day,
has been squeezed dry. Why howl about his wrongs
after said wrongs have been redressed? Why
screech about the “damnable spirit of Cahst”
when the victim thereof sits at the first table,
and his oppressor mildly takes, in hash, what he leaves?
You see, friend Twain, the Fifteenth Amendment
busted “Cussed Be Canaan.” I
howled feelingly on the subject while it was a living
issue, for I felt all that I said and a great deal
more; but now that we have won our fight why dance
frantically on the dead corpse of our enemy?
The Reliable Contraband is contraband no more, but
a citizen of the United States, and I speak of
him no more.

Give me a week to think of your proposition.
If I can jerk a lecture in time I will go with
you. The Lord knows I would like to. —­[Nasby’s
lecture, “Cussed Be Canaan,” opened, “We
are all descended from grandfathers!” He
had a powerful voice, and always just on the stroke
of eight he rose and vigorously delivered this sentence.
Once, after lecturing an entire season—­two
hundred and twenty-five nights—­he went
home to rest. That evening he sat, musingly
drowsing by the fire, when the clock struck eight.
Without a moment’s thought Nasby sprang
to his feet and thundered out, “We are all
descended from grandfathers!”]

Nasby did not go, and Clemens’s enthusiasm cooled
at the prospect of setting out alone on that long
tour. Furthermore, Jervis Langdon promptly insisted
on advancing the money required to complete the purchase
of the Express, and the trade was closed.—­[Mr.
Langdon is just as good for $25,000 for me, and has
already advanced half of it in cash. I wrote
and asked whether I had better send him my note, or
a due bill, or how he would prefer to have the indebtedness
made of record, and he answered every other topic
in the letter pleasantly, but never replied to that
at all. Still, I shall give my note into a hands
of his business agent here, and pay him the interest
as it falls due.—­S. L. C. to his mother.]

The Buffalo Express was at this time in the hands
of three men—­Col. George F. Selkirk,
J. L. Lamed, and Thomas A. Kennett. Colonel Selkirk
was business manager, Lamed was political editor.
With the purchase of Kennett’s share Clemens
became a sort of general and contributing editor,
with a more or less “roving commission”—­his
hours and duties not very clearly defined. It
was believed by his associates, and by Clemens himself,
that his known connection with the paper would give
it prestige and circulation, as Nasby’s connection
had popularized the Toledo Blade. The new editor
entered upon his duties August 14 (1869). The
members of the Buffalo press gave him a dinner that
evening, and after the manner of newspaper men the
world over, were handsomely cordial to the “new
enemy in their midst.”

Page 225

There is an anecdote which relates that next morning,
when Mark Twain arrived in the Express office (it
was then at 14 Swan Street), there happened to be
no one present who knew him. A young man rose
very bruskly and asked if there was any one he would
like to see. It is reported that he replied,
with gentle deliberation:

“Well, yes, I should like to see some young
man offer the new editor a chair.”

It is so like Mark Twain that we are inclined to accept
it, though it seems of doubtful circumstance.
In any case it deserves to be true. His “Salutatory”
(August 18th) is sufficiently genuine:

Being a stranger, it would be immodest
for me to suddenly and violently assume the associate
editorship of the Buffalo Express without a single
word of comfort or encouragement to the unoffending
patrons of the paper, who are about to be exposed
to constant attacks of my wisdom and learning.
But the word shall be as brief as possible.
I only want to assure parties having a friendly interest
in the prosperity of the journal that I am not going
to hurt the paper deliberately and intentionally
at any time. I am not going to introduce
any startling reforms, nor in any way attempt to make
trouble.... I shall not make use of slang and
vulgarity upon any occasion or under any circumstances,
and shall never use profanity except when discussing
house rent and taxes. Indeed, upon a second
thought, I shall not use it even then, for it is unchristian,
inelegant, and degrading; though, to speak truly, I
do not see how house rent and taxes are going
to be discussed worth a cent without it.
I shall not often meddle with politics, because we
have a political Editor who is already excellent
and only needs to serve a term or two in the penitentiary
to be perfect. I shall not write any poetry
unless I conceive a spite against the subscribers.

Such is my platform.
I do not see any use in it, but custom is law
and must be obeyed.

John Harrison Mills, who was connected with the Express
in those days, has written:

I cannot remember that there was any
delay in getting down to his work. I think
within five minutes the new editor had assumed the
easy look of one entirely at home, pencil in hand
and a clutch of paper before him, with an air
of preoccupation, as of one intent on a task delayed.
It was impossible to be conscious of the man sitting
there, and not feel his identity with all that he had
enjoyed, and the reminiscence of it he that seemed
to radiate; for the personality was so absolutely
in accord with all the record of himself and his
work. I cannot say he seemed to be that vague
thing they call a type in race or blood, though
the word, if used in his case for temperament,
would decidedly mean what they used to call the
“sanguine.”

I thought that, pictorially, the noble
costume of the Albanian would have well become
him. Or he might have been a Goth, and worn the

Page 226

horned bull-pate helmet of Alaric’s warriors;
or stood at the prow of one of the swift craft
of the Vikings. His eyes, which have been variously
described, were, it seemed to me, of an indescribable
depth of the bluish moss-agate, with a capacity
of pupil dilation that in certain lights had the
effect of a deep black....

Mr. Mills adds that in dress he was now “well
groomed,” and that consequently they were obliged
to revise their notions as to the careless negligee
which gossip had reported.—­[From unpublished
Reminiscences kindly lent to the author by Mr. Mills]

LXXIII

THE FIRST MEETING WITH HOWELLS

Clemens’ first period of editorial work was
a brief one, though he made frequent contributions
to the paper: sketches, squibs, travel-notes,
and experiences, usually humorous in character.
His wedding-day had been set for early in the year,
and it was necessary to accumulate a bank account
for that occasion. Before October he was out on
the lecture circuit, billed now for the first time
for New England, nervous and apprehensive in consequence,
though with good hope. To Pamela he wrote (November
9th):

To-morrow night I appear for the first time before
a Boston audience —­4,000 critics—­and
on the success of this matter depends my future success
in New England. But I am not distressed.
Nasby is in the same boat. Tonight decides the
fate of his brand-new lecture. He has just left
my room—­been reading his lecture to me—­was
greatly depressed. I have convinced him that
he has little to fear.

Whatever alarm Mark Twain may have felt was not warranted.
His success with the New England public was immediate
and complete. He made his headquarters in Boston,
at Redpath’s office, where there was pretty sure
to be a congenial company, of which he was presently
the center.

It was during one of these Boston sojourns that he
first met William Dean Howells, his future friend
and literary counselor. Howells was assistant
editor of the Atlantic at this time; James T. Fields,
its editor. Clemens had been gratified by the
Atlantic review, and had called to express his thanks
for it. He sat talking to Fields, when Howells
entered the editorial rooms, and on being presented
to the author of the review, delivered his appreciation
in the form of a story, sufficiently appropriate,
but not qualified for the larger types.—­[He
said: “When I read that review of yours,
I felt like the woman who was so glad her baby had
come white.”]

His manner, his humor, his quaint colloquial forms
all delighted Howells —­more, in fact, than
the opulent sealskin overcoat which he affected at
this period—­a garment astonishing rather
than esthetic, as Mark Twain’s clothes in those
days of his first regeneration were likely to be startling
enough, we may believe; in the conservative atmosphere
of the Atlantic rooms. And Howells—­gentle,

Page 227

genial, sincere—­filled with the early happiness
of his calling, won the heart of Mark Twain and never
lost it, and, what is still more notable, won his absolute
and unvarying confidence in all literary affairs.
It was always Mark Twain’s habit to rely on
somebody, and in matters pertaining to literature and
to literary people in general he laid his burden on
William Dean Howells from that day. Only a few
weeks after that first visit we find him telegraphing
to Howells, asking him to look after a Californian
poet, then ill and friendless in Brooklyn. Clemens
states that he does not know the poet, but will contribute
fifty dollars if Howells will petition the steamboat
company for a pass; and no doubt Howells complied,
and spent a good deal more than fifty dollars’
worth of time to get the poet relieved and started;
it would be like him.

LXXIV

THE WEDDING-DAY

The wedding was planned, at first, either for Christmas
or New-Year’s Day; but as the lecture engagements
continued into January it was decided to wait until
these were filled. February 2d, a date near the
anniversary of the engagement, was agreed upon, also
a quiet wedding with no “tour.” The
young people would go immediately to Buffalo, and take
up a modest residence, in a boardinghouse as comfortable,
even as luxurious, as the husband’s financial
situation justified. At least that was Samuel
Clemens’s understanding of the matter. He
felt that he was heavily in debt—­that his
first duty was to relieve himself of that obligation.

There were other plans in Elmira, but in the daily
and happy letters he received there was no inkling
of any new purpose.

He wrote to J. D. F. Slee, of Buffalo, who was associated
in business with Mr. Langdon, and asked him to find
a suitable boarding-place, one that would be sufficiently
refined for the woman who was to be his wife, and
sufficiently reasonable to insure prosperity.
In due time Slee replied that, while boarding was
a “miserable business anyhow,” he had
been particularly fortunate in securing a place on
one of the most pleasant streets—­“the
family a small one and choice spirits, with no predilection
for taking boarders, and consenting to the present
arrangement only because of the anticipated pleasure
of your company.” The price, Slee added,
would be reasonable. As a matter of fact a house
on Delaware Avenue—­still the fine residence
street of Buffalo—­had been bought and furnished
throughout as a present to the bride and groom.
It stands to-day practically unchanged—­brick
and mansard without, Eastlake within, a type then
much in vogue—­spacious and handsome for
that period. It was completely appointed.
Diagrams of the rooms had been sent to Elmira and
Miss Langdon herself had selected the furnishings.
Everything was put in readiness, including linen,
cutlery, and utensils. Even the servants had
been engaged and the pantry and cellar had been stocked.

Page 228

It must have been hard for Olivia Langdon to keep
this wonderful surprise out of those daily letters.
A surprise like that is always watching a chance to
slip out unawares, especially when one is eagerly impatient
to reveal it.

However, the traveler remained completely in the dark.
He may have wondered vaguely at the lack of enthusiasm
in the boarding idea, and could he have been certain
that the sales of the book would continue, or that
his newspaper venture would yield an abundant harvest,
he might have planned his domestic beginning on a
more elaborate scale. If only the Tennessee land
would yield the long-expected fortune now! But
these were all incalculable things. All that
he could be sure of was the coming of his great happiness,
in whatever environment, and of the dragging weeks
between.

At last the night of the final lecture came, and he
was off for Elmira with the smallest possible delay.
Once there, the intervening days did not matter.
He could join in the busy preparations; he could write
exuberantly to his friends. To Laura Hawkins,
long since Laura Frazer he sent a playful line; to
Jim Gillis, still digging and washing on the slopes
of the old Tuolumne hills, he wrote a letter which
eminently belongs here:

Elmira, N. Y.,
January 26, 1870.

Dear Jim,—­I remember
that old night just as well! And somewhere among
my relics I have your remembrance stored away.
It makes my heart ache yet to call to mind some
of those days. Still it shouldn’t,
for right in the depths of their poverty and their
pocket-hunting vagabondage lay the germ of my coming
good fortune. You remember the one gleam
of jollity that shot across our dismal sojourn
in the rain and mud of Angel’s Camp—­I
mean that day we sat around the tavern stove and
heard that chap tell about the frog and how they
filled him with shot. And you remember how we
quoted from the yarn and laughed over it out there
on the hillside while you and dear old Stoker
panned and washed. I jotted the story down in
my note-book that day, and would have been glad
to get ten or fifteen dollars for it—­I
was just that blind. But then we were so hard
up. I published that story, and it became
widely known in America, India, China, England,
and the reputation it made for me has paid me thousands
and thousands of dollars since. Four or five months
ago I bought into the Express (I have ordered
it sent to you as long as you live, and if the
bookkeeper sends you any bills you let me hear of
it). I went heavily in debt—­never could
have dared to do that, Jim, if we hadn’t
heard the jumping Frog story that day.

And wouldn’t I love to take old
Stoker by the hand, and wouldn’t I love
to see him in his great specialty, his wonderful rendition
of Rinalds in the “Burning Shame!”
Where is Dick and what is he doing? Give
him my fervent love and warm old remembrances.

A week from to-day I shall be married-to

Page 229

a girl even better and
lovelier than the peerless “Chapparal Quails.”
You can’t come so
far, Jim, but still I cordially invite you to
come anyhow, and I
invite Dick too. And if you two boys were
to land here on that
pleasant occasion we would make you right royally
welcome.
Truly your friend,
SAML. L. Clemens.

P.S.—–­California
plums are good. Jim, particularly when they are
stewed.

It had been only five years before—­that
day in Angel’s Camp—­but how long
ago and how far away it seemed to him now! So
much had happened since then, so much of which that
was the beginning—­so little compared with
the marvel of the years ahead, whose threshold he was
now about to cross, and not alone.

A day or two before the wedding he was asked to lecture
on the night of February 2d. He replied that
he was sorry to disappoint the applicant, but that
he could not lecture on the night of February 2d, for
the reason that he was going to marry a young lady
on that evening, and that he would rather marry that
young lady than deliver all the lectures in the world.

And so came the wedding-day. It began pleasantly;
the postman brought a royalty check that morning of
$4,000, the accumulation of three months’ sales,
and the Rev. Joseph Twichell and Harmony, his wife,
came from Hartford—­Twichell to join with
the Rev. Thomas K. Beecher in solemnizing the marriage.
Pamela Moffett, a widow now, with her daughter Annie,
grown to a young lady, had come all the way from St.
Louis, and Mrs. Fairbanks from Cleveland.

Yet the guests were not numerous, not more than a
hundred at most, so it was a quiet wedding there in
the Langdon parlors, those dim, stately rooms that
in the future would hold so much of his history—­so
much of the story of life and death that made its
beginning there.

The wedding-service was about seven o’clock,
for Mr. Beecher had a meeting at the church soon after
that hour. Afterward followed the wedding-supper
and dancing, and the bride’s father danced with
the bride. To the interested crowd awaiting him
at the church Mr. Beecher reported that the bride
was very beautiful, and had on the longest white gloves
he had ever seen; he declared they reached to her
shoulders.—­[Perhaps for a younger generation
it should be said that Thomas K. Beecher was a brother
of Henry Ward Beecher. He lived and died in Elmira,
the almost worshiped pastor of the Park Congregational
Church. He was a noble, unorthodox teacher.
Samuel Clemens at the time of his marriage already
strongly admired him, and had espoused his cause in
an article signed “S’cat!” in the
Elmira Advertiser, when he (Beecher) had been assailed
by the more orthodox Elmira clergy. For the “S’cat”
article see Appendix I, at the end of last volume.]

Page 230

It was the next afternoon when they set out for Buffalo,
accompanied by the bride’s parents, the groom’s
relatives, the Beechers, and perhaps one or two others
of that happy company. It was nine o’clock
at night when they arrived, and found Mr. Slee waiting
at the station with sleighs to convey the party to
the “boarding-house” he had selected.
They drove and drove, and the sleigh containing the
bride and groom got behind and apparently was bound
nowhere in particular, which disturbed the groom a
good deal, for he thought it proper that they should
arrive first, to receive their guests. He commented
on Slee’s poor judgment in selecting a house
that was so hard to find, and when at length they turned
into fashionable Delaware Avenue, and stopped before
one of the most attractive places in the neighborhood,
he was beset with fear concerning the richness of
the locality.

They were on the steps when the doors opened, and
a perfect fairyland of lights and decoration was revealed
within. The friends who had gone ahead came out
with greetings, to lead in the bride and groom.
Servants hurried forward to take bags and wraps.
They were ushered inside; they were led through beautiful
rooms, all newly appointed and garnished. The
bridegroom was dazed, unable to understand the meaning
of things, the apparent ownership and completeness
of possession.

At last the young wife put her hand upon his arm:

“Don’t you understand, Youth,” she
said; that was always her name for him. “Don’t
you understand? It is ours, all ours—­everything—­a
gift from father!”

But even then he could not grasp it; not at first,
not until Mr. Langdon brought a little box and, opening
it, handed them the deeds.

Nobody quite remembers what was the first remark that
Samuel Clemens made then; but either then or a little
later he said:

“Mr. Langdon, whenever you are in Buffalo, if
it’s twice a year, come right here. Bring
your bag and stay overnight if you want to. It
sha’n’t cost you a cent!”

They went in to supper then, and by and by the guests
were gone and the young wedded pair were alone.

Patrick McAleer, the young coachman, who would grow
old in their employ, and Ellen, the cook, came in
for their morning orders, and were full of Irish delight
at the inexperience and novelty of it all. Then
they were gone, and only the lovers in their new house
and their new happiness remained.

And so it was they entered the enchanted land.

LXXV

AS TO DESTINY

If any reader has followed these chapters thus far,
he may have wondered, even if vaguely, at the seeming
fatality of events. Mark Twain had but to review
his own life for justification of his doctrine of inevitability
—­an unbroken and immutable sequence of cause
and effect from the beginning. Once he said:

“When the first living atom found itself afloat
on the great Laurentian sea the first act of that
first atom led to the second act of that first atom,
and so on down through the succeeding ages of all life,
until, if the steps could be traced, it would be shown
that the first act of that first atom has led inevitably
to the act of my standing here in my dressing-gown
at this instant talking to you.”

Page 231

It seemed the clearest presentment ever offered in
the matter of predestined circumstance—­predestined
from the instant when that primal atom felt the vital
thrill. Mark Twain’s early life, however
imperfectly recorded, exemplifies this postulate.
If through the years still ahead of us the course
of destiny seems less clearly defined, it is only
because thronging events make the threads less easy
to trace. The web becomes richer, the pattern
more intricate and confusing, but the line of fate
neither breaks nor falters, to the end.

LXXVI

Onthebuffalo “Express”

With the beginning of life in Buffalo, Mark Twain
had become already a world character—­a
man of large consequence and events. He had no
proper realization of this, no real sense of the size
of his conquest; he still regarded himself merely
as a lecturer and journalist, temporarily popular,
but with no warrant to a permanent seat in the world’s
literary congress. He thought his success something
of an accident. The fact that he was prepared
to settle down as an editorial contributor to a newspaper
in what was then only a big village is the best evidence
of a modest estimate of his talents.

He “worked like a horse,” is the verdict
of those who were closely associated with him on the
Express. His hours were not regular, but they
were long. Often he was at his desk at eight in
the morning, and remained there until ten or eleven
at night.

His working costume was suited to comfort rather than
show. With coat, vest, collar, and tie usually
removed (sometimes even his shoes), he lounged in
his chair, in any attitude that afforded the larger
ease, pulling over the exchanges; scribbling paragraphs,
editorials, humorous skits, and what not, as the notion
came upon him. J. L. Lamed, his co-worker (he
sat on the opposite side of the same table), remembers
that Mark Twain enjoyed his work as he went along—­the
humor of it—­and that he frequently laughed
as some whimsicality or new absurdity came into his
mind.

“I doubt,” writes Lamed, “if he
ever enjoyed anything more than the jackknife engraving
that he did on a piece of board of a military map of
the siege of Paris, which was printed in the Express
from his original plate, with accompanying explanations
and comments. His half-day of whittling and laughter
that went with it are something that I find pleasant
to remember. Indeed, my whole experience of association
with him is a happy memory, which I am fortunate in
having.... What one saw of him was always the
actual Mark Twain, acting out of his own nature simply,
frankly, without pretense, and almost without reserve.
It was that simplicity and naturalness in the man
which carried his greatest charm.”

Lamed, like many others, likens Mark Twain to Lincoln
in various of his characteristics. The two worked
harmoniously together: Lamed attending to the
political direction of the journal, Clemens to the
literary, and what might be termed the sentimental
side. There was no friction in the division of
labor, never anything but good feeling between them.
Clemens had a poor opinion of his own comprehension
of politics, and perhaps as little regard for Lamed’s
conception of humor. Once when the latter attempted
something in the way of pleasantry his associate said:

Page 232

“Better leave the humor on this paper to me,
Lamed”; and once when Lamed was away attending
the Republican State Convention at Saratoga, and some
editorial comment seemed necessary, Clemens thought
it best to sign the utterance, and to make humor of
his shortcomings.

I do not know much about politics,
and am not sitting up nights to
learn . . . .

I am satisfied that these nominations
are all right and sound, and that they are the
only ones that can bring peace to our distracted country
(the only political phrase I am perfectly familiar
with and competent to hurl at the public with
fearless confidence—­the other editor
is full of them), but being merely satisfied is not
enough. I always like to know before I shout.
But I go for Mr. Curtis with all my strength!
Being certain of him, I hereby shout all I know how.
But the others may be a split ticket, or a scratched
ticket, or whatever you call it.

I will let it alone for the present.
It will keep. The other young man will be
back to-morrow, and he will shout for it, split or
no split, rest assured of that. He will prance
into this political ring with his tomahawk and
his war-whoop, and then you will hear a crash
and see the scalps fly. He has none of my diffidence.
He knows all about these nominees, and if he don’t
he will let on to in such a natural way as to
deceive the most critical. He knows everything—­he
knows more than Webster’s Unabridged and the
American Encyclopedia—­but whether he
knows anything about a subject or not he is perfectly
willing to discuss it. When he gets back he will
tell you all about these candidates as serenely
as if he had been acquainted with them a hundred
years, though, speaking confidentially, I doubt
if he ever heard of any of them till to-day.
I am right well satisfied it is a good, sound,
sensible ticket, and a ticket to win; but wait
till he comes.

In the mean time I go for
George William Curtis and take the
chances. Marktwain.

He had become what Mr. Howells calls entirely “desouthernized”
by this time. From having been of slaveholding
stock, and a Confederate soldier, he had become a
most positive Republican, a rampant abolitionist—­had
there been anything left to abolish. His sympathy
had been always with the oppressed, and he had now
become their defender. His work on the paper
revealed this more and more. He wrote fewer sketches
and more editorials, and the editorials were likely
to be either savage assaults upon some human abuse,
or fierce espousals of the weak. They were fearless,
scathing, terrific. Of some farmers of Cohocton,
who had taken the law into their own hands to punish
a couple whom they believed to be a detriment to the
community, he wrote:

“The men who did that deed are capable of doing
any low, sneaking, cowardly villainy that could be
invented in perdition. They are the very bastards
of the devil.”

Page 233

He appended a full list of their names, and added:

“If the farmers of Cohocton are of this complexion,
what on earth must a Cohocton rough be like?”

But all this happened a long time ago, and we need
not detail those various old interests and labors
here. It is enough to say that Mark Twain on
the Express was what he had been from the beginning,
and would be to the end—­the zealous champion
of justice and liberty; violent and sometimes wrong
in his viewpoint, but never less than fearless and
sincere. Invariably he was for the oppressed.
He had a natural instinct for the right, but, right
or wrong, he was for the under dog.

Among the best of his editorial contributions is a
tribute to Anson Burlingame, who died February 23,
1870, at St. Petersburg, on his trip around the world
as special ambassador for the Chinese Empire.
In this editorial Clemens endeavored to pay something
of his debt to the noble statesman. He reviewed
Burlingame’s astonishing career—­the
career which had closed at forty-seven, and read like
a fairy-tale-and he dwelt lovingly on his hero’s
nobility of character. At the close he said:

“He was a good man, and a very, very great man.
America, lost a son, and all the world a servant,
when he died.”

Among those early contributions to the Express is
a series called “Around the World,” an
attempt at collaboration with Prof. D. R. Ford,
who did the actual traveling, while Mark Twain, writing
in the first person, gave the letters his literary
stamp. At least some of the contributions were
written in this way, such as “Adventures in Hayti,”
“The Pacific,” and “Japan.”
These letters exist to-day only in the old files of
the Express, and indeed this is the case with most
of Clemens’s work for that paper. It was
mainly ephemeral or timely work, and its larger value
has disappeared. Here and there is a sentence
worth remembering. Of two practical jokers who
sent in a marriage notice of persons not even contemplating
matrimony, he said: “This deceit has been
practised maliciously by a couple of men whose small
souls will escape through their pores some day if
they do not varnish their hides.”

Some of the sketches have been preserved. “Journalism
in Tennessee,” one of the best of his wilder
burlesques, is as enjoyable to-day as when written.
“A Curious Dream” made a lasting impression
on his Buffalo readers, and you are pretty certain
to hear of it when you mention Mark Twain in that
city to-day. It vividly called attention to the
neglect of the old North Street graveyard. The
gruesome vision of the ancestors deserting with their
coffins on their backs was even more humiliating than
amusing, and inspired a movement for reform. It
has been effective elsewhere since then, and may still
be read with profit—­or satisfaction —­for
in a note at the end the reader is assured that if
the cemeteries of his town are kept in good order
the dream is not leveled at his town at all, but “particularly
and venomously at the next town.”

Page 234

LXXVII

The “Galaxy”

Mark Twain’s work on the Express represented
only a portion of his literary activities during his
Buffalo residence. The Galaxy, an ambitious New
York magazine of that day—­[published by
Sheldon & Co. at 498 and 500 Broadway]—­,
proposed to him that he conduct for them a humorous
department. They would pay $2,400 a year for the
work, and allow him a free hand. There was some
discussion as to book rights, but the arrangement
was concluded, and his first instalment, under the
general title of “Memoranda,” appeared
in the May number, 1870. In his Introductory
he outlined what the reader might expect, such as
“exhaustive statistical tables,” “Patent
Office reports,” and “complete instructions
about farming, even from the grafting of the seed to
the harrowing of the matured crops.” He
declared that he would throw a pathos into the subject
of agriculture that would surprise and delight the
world. He added that the “Memoranda”
was not necessarily a humorous department.

I would not conduct an exclusively and
professedly humorous department for any one.
I would always prefer to have the privilege of
printing a serious and sensible remark, in case one
occurred to me, without the reader’s feeling
obliged to consider himself outraged....
Puns cannot be allowed a place in this department....
No circumstance, however dismal, will ever be considered
a sufficient excuse for the admission of that
last and saddest evidence of intellectual poverty,
the pun.

The Galaxy was really a fine magazine, with the best
contributors obtainable; among them Justin McCarthy,
S. M. B. Piatt, Richard Grant White, and many others
well known in that day, with names that still flicker
here and there in its literary twilight. The new
department appealed to Clemens, and very soon he was
writing most of his sketches for it. They were
better literature, as a rule, than those published
in his own paper.

The first number of the “Memoranda” was
fairly representative of those that followed it.
“The Facts in the Case of the Great Beef Contract,”
a manuscript which he had undertaken three years before
and mislaid, was its initial contribution. Besides
the “Beef Contract,” there was a tribute
to George Wakeman, a well-known journalist of those
days; a stricture on the Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage, who
had delivered from the pulpit an argument against
workingmen occupying pews in fashionable churches;
a presentment of the Chinese situation in San Francisco,
depicting the cruel treatment of the Celestial immigrant;
a burlesque of the Sunday-school “good little
boy” story,—­["The Story of the Good
Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper” and the “Beef
Contract” are included in Sketches New and Old;
also the Chinese sketch, under the title, “Disgraceful
Persecution of a Boy."]—­and several shorter
skits—­and anecdotes, ten pages in all;
a rather generous contract.

Page 235

Mark Twain’s comment on Talmage was prompted
by an article in which Talmage had assumed the premise
that if workingmen attended the churches it would
drive the better class of worshipers away. Among
other things he said:

I have a good Christian friend who,
if he sat in the front pew in church, and a workingman
should enter the door at the other end, would
smell him instantly. My friend is not to blame
for the sensitiveness of his nose, any more than
you would flog a pointer for being keener on the
scent than a stupid watch-dog. The fact is, if
you had all the churches free, by reason of the mixing
of the common people with the uncommon, you would
keep one-half of Christendom sick at their stomach.
If you are going to kill the church thus with
bad smells I will have nothing to do with this work
of evangelization.

Commenting on this Mark Twain said—­well,
he said a good deal more than we have room for here,
but a portion of his closing paragraphs is worth preserving.
He compares the Reverend Mr. Talmage with the early
disciples of Christ—­Paul and Peter and the
others; or, rather, he contrasts him with them.

They healed the very beggars, and held
intercourse with people of a villainous odor every
day. If the subject of these remarks had been
chosen among the original Twelve Apostles he would
not have associated with the rest, because he
could not have stood the fishy smell of some of
his comrades who came from around the Sea of Galilee.
He would have resigned his commission with some such
remark as he makes in the extract quoted above:
“Master, if thou art going to kill the church
thus with bad smells I will have nothing to do
with this work of evangelization.” He is
a disciple, and makes that remark to the Master;
the only difference is that he makes it in the
nineteenth instead of the first century.

Talmage was immensely popular at this time, and Mark
Twain’s open attack on him must have shocked
a good many Galaxy readers, as perhaps his article
on the Chinese cruelties offended the citizens of San
Francisco. It did not matter. He was not
likely to worry over the friends he would lose because
of any stand taken for human justice. Lamed said
of him: “He was very far from being one
who tried in any way to make himself popular.”
Certainly he never made any such attempt at the expense
of his convictions.

The first Galaxy instalment was a sort of platform
of principles for the campaign that was to follow.
Not that each month’s contribution contained
personal criticism, or a defense of the Chinese (of
whom he was always the champion as long as he lived),
but a good many of them did. In the October number
he began a series of letters under the general title
of “Goldsmith’s Friend Abroad Again,”
supposed to have been written by a Chinese immigrant
in San Francisco, detailing his experience there.
In a note the author says: “No experience
is set down in the following letters which had to

Page 236

be invented. Fancy is not needed to give variety
to the history of the Chinaman’s sojourn in
America. Plain fact is amply sufficient.”
The letters show how the supposed Chinese writer of
them had set out for America, believing it to be a
land whose government was based on the principle that
all men are created equal, and treated accordingly;
how, upon arriving in San Francisco, he was kicked
and bruised and beaten, and set upon by dogs, flung
into jail, tried and condemned without witnesses,
his own race not being allowed to testify against
Americans—­Irish-Americans—­in
the San Francisco court. They are scathing, powerful
letters, and one cannot read them, even in this day
of improved conditions, without feeling the hot waves
of resentment and indignation which Mark Twain must
have felt when he penned them.

Reverend Mr. Talmage was not the only divine to receive
attention in the “Memoranda.” The
Reverend Mr. Sabine, of New York, who had declined
to hold a church burial service for the old actor,
George Holland, came in for the most caustic as well
as the most artistic stricture of the entire series.
It deserves preservation to-day, not only for its literary
value, but because no finer defense of the drama, no
more searching sermon on self-righteousness, has ever
been put into concrete form. —­["The Indignity
Put Upon the Remains of Gorge Holland by the Rev. Mr.
Sabine”; Galaxy for February, 1871. The
reader will find it complete under Appendix J, at
the end of last volume.]

The “Little Church Around the Corner”
on Twenty-ninth Street received that happy title from
this incident.

“There is a little church around the corner
that will, perhaps, permit the service,” Mr.
Sabine had said to Holland’s friends.

The little church did permit the service, and there
was conferred upon it the new name, which it still
bears. It has sheltered a long line of actor
folk and their friends since then, earning thereby
reverence, gratitude, and immortal memory.—­[Church
of the Transfiguration. Memorial services were
held there for Joseph Jefferson; and a memorial window,
by John La Farge, has been placed there in memory
of Edwin Booth.]

Of the Galaxy contributions a number are preserved
in Sketches New and Old. “How I Edited
an Agricultural Paper” is one of the best of
these —­an excellent example of Mark Twain’s
more extravagant style of humor. It is perennially
delightful; in France it has been dramatized, and is
still played.

A successful Galaxy feature, also preserved in the
Sketches, was the “Burlesque Map of Paris,”
reprinted from the Express. The Franco-Prussian
War was in progress, and this travesty was particularly
timely. It creates only a smile of amusement to-day,
but it was all fresh and delightful then. Schuyler
Colfax, by this time Vice-President, wrote to him:
“I have had the heartiest possible laugh over
it, and so have all my family. You are a wicked,
conscienceless wag, who ought to be punished severely.”

Page 237

The “Official Commendations,” which accompany
the map, are its chief charm. They are from Grant,
Bismarck, Brigham Young, and others, the best one
coming from one J. Smith, who says:

My wife was for years afflicted with
freckles, and though everything was done for her
relief that could be done, all was in vain. But,
sir, since her first glance at your map they have
entirely left her. She has nothing but convulsions
now.

It is said that the “Map of Paris” found
its way to Berlin, where the American students in
the beer-halls used to pretend to quarrel over it
until they attracted the attention of the German soldiers
that might be present. Then they would wander
away and leave it on the table and watch results.
The soldiers would pounce upon it and lose their tempers
over it; then finally abuse it and revile its author,
to the satisfaction of everybody.

The larger number of “Memoranda” sketches
have properly found oblivion to-day. They were
all, or nearly all, collected by a Canadian pirate,
C. A. Backas, in a volume bearing the title of Memoranda,—­[Also
by a harpy named John Camden Hotten (of London), of
whom we shall hear again. Hotten had already
pirated The Innocents, and had it on the market before
Routledge could bring out the authorized edition.
Routledge later published the “Memoranda”
under the title of Sketches, including the contents
of the Jumping Frog book.]—­a book long ago
suppressed. Only about twenty of the Galaxy contributions
found place in Sketches New and Old, five years later,
and some of these might have been spared as literature.
“To Raise Poultry,” “John Chinaman
in New York,” and “History Repeats Itself”
are valuable only as examples of his work at that
period. The reader may consult them for himself.

LXXVIII

THE PRIMROSE PATH

But we are losing sight of more important things.
From the very beginning Mark Twain’s home meant
always more to him than his work. The life at
472 Delaware Avenue had begun with as fair a promise
as any matrimonial journey ever undertaken: There
seemed nothing lacking: a beautiful home, sufficient
income, bright prospects—­these things, with
health and love; constitute married happiness.
Mrs. Clemens wrote to her sister, Mrs. Crane, at the
end of February: “Sue, we are two as happy
people as you ever saw. Our days seem to be made
up of only bright sunlight, with no shadow in them.”
In the same letter the husband added: “Livy
pines and pines every day for you, and I pine and pine
every day for you, and when we both of us are pining
at once you would think it was a whole pine forest
let loose.”

To Redpath, who was urging lecture engagements for
the coming season, he wrote:

Dearred,—­I am
not going to lecture any more forever. I have
got things ciphered down to a fraction now.
I know just about what it will cost to live, and
I can make the money without lecturing. Therefore,
old man, count me out.

And still later, in May:

Page 238

I guess I am out of the field permanently.
Have got a lovely wife, a lovely house, bewitchingly
furnished, a lovely carriage, and a coachman whose
style and dignity are simply awe-in-spiring, nothing
less; and I am making more money than necessary,
by considerable, and therefore why crucify myself
nightly on the platform? The subscriber will
have to be excused for the present season at least.

So they were very happy during those early months,
acquiring pleasantly the education which any matrimonial
experience is sure to furnish, accustoming themselves
to the uses of housekeeping, to life in partnership,
with all the discoveries and mental and spiritual
adaptations that belong to the close association of
marriage. They were far, very far, apart on many
subjects. He was unpolished, untrained, impulsive,
sometimes violent. Twichell remembers that in
the earlier days of their acquaintance he wore a slouch
hat pulled down in front, and smoked a cigar that
sometimes tilted up and touched the brim of it.
The atmosphere and customs of frontier life, the Westernisms
of that day, still clung to him. Mrs. Clemens,
on the other hand, was conservative, dainty, cultured,
spiritual. He adored her as little less than a
saint, and she became, indeed, his saving grace.
She had all the personal refinement which he lacked,
and she undertook the work of polishing and purifying
her life companion. She had no wish to destroy
his personality, to make him over, but only to preserve
his best, and she set about it in the right way—­gently,
and with a tender gratitude in each achievement.

She did not entirely approve of certain lines of his
reading; or, rather, she did not understand them in
those days. That he should be fond of history
and the sciences was natural enough, but when the Life
of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself, appeared, and
he sat up nights to absorb it, and woke early and
lighted the lamp to follow the career of the great
showman, she was at a loss to comprehend this particular
literary passion, and indeed was rather jealous of
it. She did not realize then his vast interest
in the study of human nature, or that such a book
contained what Mr. Howells calls “the root of
the human matter,” the inner revelation of the
human being at first hand.

Concerning his religious observances her task in the
beginning was easy enough. Clemens had not at
that time formulated any particular doctrines of his
own. His natural kindness of heart, and especially
his love for his wife, inclined him toward the teachings
and customs of her Christian faith—­unorthodox
but sincere, as Christianity in the Langdon family
was likely to be. It took very little persuasion
on his wife’s part to establish family prayers
in their home, grace before meals, and the morning
reading of a Bible chapter. Joe Goodman, who made
a trip East, and visited them during the early days
of their married life, was dumfounded to see Mark
Twain ask a blessing and join in family worship.
Just how long these forms continued cannot be known
to-day; the time of their abandonment has perished
from the recollection of any one now living.

Page 239

It would seem to have been the Bible-reading that
wrought the change. The prayer and the blessing
were to him sincere and gracious; but as the readings
continued he realized that he had never before considered
the Bible from a doctrinal point of view, as a guide
to spiritual salvation. To his logical reasoning
mind, a large portion of it seemed absurd: a
mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology.
From such material humanity had built its mightiest
edifice of hope, the doctrines of its faith.
After a little while he could stand it no longer.

“Livy,” he said one day, “you may
keep this up if you want to, but I must ask you to
excuse me from it. It is making me a hypocrite.
I don’t believe in this Bible. It contradicts
my reason. I can’t sit here and listen
to it, letting you believe that I regard it, as you
do, in the light of gospel, the word of God.”

He was moved to write an article on the human idea
of God, ancient and modern. It contained these
paragraphs:

The difference in importance, between
the God of the Bible and the God of the present
day, cannot be described, it can only be vaguely and
inadequately figured to the mind . . . . If you
make figures to represent the earth and moon,
and allow a space of one inch between them, to
represent the four hundred thousand miles of distance
which lies between the two bodies, the map will have
to be eleven miles long in order to bring in the
nearest fixed star. —­[His figures were
far too small. A map drawn on the scale of 400,000
miles to the inch would need to be 1,100 miles long
to take in both the earth and the nearest fixed
star. On such a map the earth would be one-fiftieth
of an inch in diameter—­the size of a small
grain of sand.]—­So one cannot put the modern
heavens on a map, nor the modern God; but the
Bible God and the Bible heavens can be set down
on a slate and yet not be discommoded . . . .

The difference between that universe
and the modern one revealed by science is as the
difference between a dust-flecked ray in a barn and
the sublime arch of the Milky Way in the skies.
Its God was strictly proportioned to its dimensions.
His sole solicitude was about a handful of truculent
nomads. He worried and fretted over them
in a peculiarly and distractingly human way. One
day he coaxed and petted them beyond their due,
the next he harried and lashed them beyond their
deserts. He sulked, he cursed, he raged, he grieved,
according to his mood and the circumstances, but all
to no purpose; his efforts were all vain, he could
not govern them. When the fury was on him
he was blind to all reason—­he not only
slaughtered the offender, but even his harmless
little children and dumb cattle....

To trust the God of the Bible is to
trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever
fickle and changeful master; to trust the true God
is to trust a Being who has uttered no promises,
but whose beneficent, exact, and changeless ordering

Page 240

of the machinery of his colossal universe is proof
that he is at least steadfast to his purposes;
whose unwritten laws, so far as they affect man, being
equal and impartial, show that he is just and fair;
these things, taken together, suggest that if
he shall ordain us to live hereafter, he will
still be steadfast, just, and fair toward us.
We shall not need to require anything more.

It seems mild enough, obvious, even orthodox, now—­so
far have we traveled in forty years. But such
a declaration then would have shocked a great number
of sincerely devout persons. His wife prevailed
upon him not to print it. She respected his honesty—­even
his reasoning, but his doubts were a long grief to
her, nevertheless. In time she saw more clearly
with his vision, but this was long after, when she
had lived more with the world, had become more familiar
with its larger needs, and the proportions of created
things.

They did not mingle much or long with the social life
of Buffalo. They received and returned calls,
attended an occasional reception; but neither of them
found such things especially attractive in those days,
so they remained more and more in their own environment.
There is an anecdote which seems to belong here.

One Sunday morning Clemens noticed smoke pouring from
the upper window of the house across the street.
The owner and his wife, comparatively newcomers, were
seated upon the veranda, evidently not aware of impending
danger. The Clemens household thus far had delayed
calling on them, but Clemens himself now stepped briskly
across the street. Bowing with leisurely politeness,
he said:

“My name is Clemens; we ought to have called
on you before, and I beg your pardon for intruding
now in this informal way, but your house is on fire.”

Almost the only intimate friends they had in Buffalo
were in the family of David Gray, the poet-editor
of the Courier. Gray was a gentle, lovable man.
“The gentlest spirit and the loveliest that ever
went clothed in clay, since Sir Galahad laid him to
rest,” Mark Twain once said of him. Both
Gray and Clemens were friends of John Hay, and their
families soon became intimate. Perhaps, in time,
the Clemens household would have found other as good
friends in the Buffalo circles; but heavy clouds that
had lain unseen just beyond the horizon during those
earlier months of marriage rose suddenly into view,
and the social life, whatever it might have become,
was no longer a consideration.

LXXIX

THE OLD HUMAN STORY

Jervis Langdon was never able to accept his son-in-law’s
invitation to the new home. His health began
to fail that spring, and at the end of March, with
his physician and Mrs. Langdon, he made a trip to the
South. In a letter written at Richmond he said,
“I have thrown off all care,” and named
a list of the four great interests in which he was
involved. Under “number 5,” he included

Page 241

“everything,” adding, “so you see
how good I am to follow the counsel of my children.”
He closed: “Samuel, I love your wife and
she loves me. I think it is only fair that you
should know it, but you need not flare up. I
loved her before you did, and she loved me before
she did you, and has not ceased since. I see no
way but for you to make the most of it.”
He was already a very ill man, and this cheerful letter
was among the last he ever wrote.

He was absent six weeks and seemed to improve, but
suffered an attack early in May; in June his condition
became critical. Clemens and his wife were summoned
to Elmira, and joined in the nursing, day and night.
Clemens surprised every one by his ability as a nurse.
His delicacy and thoughtfulness were unfailing; his
original ways of doing things always amused and interested
the patient. In later years Mark Twain once said:

“How much of the nursing did I
do? My main watch was from midnight to four
in the morning, nearly four hours. My other watch
was a midday watch, and I think it was nearly
three hours. The two sisters divided the
remaining seventeen hours of the twenty-four hours
between them, and each of them tried generously and
persistently to swindle the other out of a part
of her watch. I went to bed early every night,
and tried to get sleep enough by midnight to fit
me for my work, but it was always a failure. I
went on watch sleepy and remained miserable, sleepy,
and wretched, straight along through the four
hours. I can still see myself sitting by
that bed in the melancholy stillness of the sweltering
night, mechanically waving a palm-leaf fan over
the drawn, white face of the patient. I can
still recall my noddings, my fleeting unconsciousness,
when the fan would come to a standstill in my hand,
and I woke up with a start and a hideous shock.
During all that dreary time I began to watch for
the dawn long before it came. When the first
faint gray showed through the window-blinds I felt
as no doubt a castaway feels when the dim threads
of the looked-for ship appear against the sky.
I was well and strong, but I was a man, afflicted
with a man’s infirmity—­lack of endurance.”

He always dealt with himself in this unsparing way;
but those who were about him then have left a different
story.

It was all without avail. Mr. Langdon rallied,
and early in July there was hope for his recovery.
He failed again, and on the afternoon of the 6th of
August he died. To Mrs. Clemens, delicate and
greatly worn with the anxiety and strain of watching,
the blow was a crushing one. It was the beginning
of a series of disasters which would mark the entire
remaining period of their Buffalo residence.

There had been a partial plan for spending the summer
in England, and a more definite one for joining the
Twichells in the Adirondacks. Both of these projects
were now abandoned. Mrs. Clemens concluded that
she would be better at home than anywhere else, and
invited an old school friend, a Miss Emma Nye, to
visit her.

Page 242

But the shadow of death had not been lifted from the
Clemens household. Miss Nye presently fell ill
with typhoid fever. There followed another long
period of anxiety and nursing, ending with the death
of the visitor in the new home, September 29th.
The young wife was now in very delicate health; genuinely
ill, in fact. The happy home had become a place
of sorrow-of troubled nights and days. Another
friend came to cheer them, and on this friend’s
departure Mrs. Clemens drove to the railway station.
It was a hurried trip over rough streets to catch the
train. She was prostrated on her return, and
a little later, November 7, 1870, her first child,
Langdon, was prematurely born. A dangerous illness
followed, and complete recovery was long delayed.
But on the 12th the crisis seemed passed, and the
new father wrote a playful letter to the Twichells,
as coming from the late arrival:

Dearuncleandaunt,—­I
came into the world on the 7th inst., and consequently
am about five days old now. I have had wretched
health ever since I made my appearance . . .
I am not corpulent, nor am I robust in any way.
At birth I only weighed four and one-half pounds
with my clothes on—­and the clothes were
the chief feature of the weight, too, I am obliged
to confess, but I am doing finely, all things
considered . . . . My little mother is very bright
and cheery, and I guess she is pretty happy, but
I don’t know what about. She laughs
a great deal, notwithstanding she is sick abed.

P. S.—­Father says
I had better write because you will be more
interested in me, just now,
than in the rest of the family.

A week later Clemens, as himself, wrote:

Livy is up and the prince keeps her
busy and anxious these latter days and nights,
but I am a bachelor up-stairs and don’t have
to jump up and get the soothing sirup, though
I would as soon do it as not, I assure you. (Livy
will be certain to read this letter.)

Tell Harmony that I do hold the baby,
and do it pretty handily too, though with occasional
apprehensions that his loose head will fall off.
I don’t have to quiet him; he hardly ever utters
a cry. He is always thinking about something.
He is a patient, good little baby.

Further along he refers to one of his reforms:

Smoke? I always smoke from three
till five on Sunday afternoons, and in New York,
the other day, I smoked a week, day and night.
But when Livy is well I smoke only those two hours
on Sunday. I’m boss of the habit now,
and shall never let it boss me any more. Originally
I quit solely on Livy’s account (not that I believed
there was the faintest reason in the matter, but
just as I would deprive myself of sugar in my
coffee if she wished it, or quit wearing socks
if she thought them immoral), and I stick to it yet
on Livy’s account, and shall always continue
to do so without a pang. But somehow it seems

Page 243

a pity that you quit, for Mrs. T. didn’t mind
it, if I remember rightly. Ah, it is turning
one’s back upon a kindly Providence to spurn
away from us the good creature he sent to make
the breath of life a luxury as well as a necessity,
enjoyable as well as useful. To go quit smoking,
when there ain’t any sufficient excuse for
it!—­why, my old boy, when they used to tell
me I would shorten my life ten years by smoking,
they little knew the devotee they were wasting
their puerile words upon; they little knew how
trivial and valueless I would regard a decade that
had no smoking in it! But I won’t persuade
you, Twichell—­I won’t until I see
you again—­but then we’ll smoke for
a week together, and then shut off again.

LXXX

LITERARY PROJECTS

The success of the Innocents naturally made a thrifty
publisher like Bliss anxious for a second experiment.
He had begun early in the year to talk about another
book, but nothing had come of it beyond a project or
two, more or less hazy and unpursued. Clemens
at one time developed a plan for a Noah’s Ark
book, which was to detail the cruise of the Ark in
diaries kept by various members of it-Shem, Ham, and
the others. He really wrote some of it at the
time, and it was an idea he never entirely lost track
of. All along among his manuscripts appear fragments
from those ancient voyagers. One of the earlier
entries will show the style and purpose of the undertaking.
It is from Shem’s record:

Friday: Papa’s birthday.
He is 600 years old. We celebrated it in a
big, black tent. Principal men of the tribe present.
Afterward they were shown over the ark, which
was looking desolate and empty and dreary on account
of a misunderstanding with the workmen about wages.
Methuselah was as free with his criticisms as usual,
and as voluble and familiar, which I and my brothers
do not like; for we are past our one hundredth
year and married. He still calls me Shemmy,
just as he did when I was a child of sixty. I
am still but a youth, it is true, but youth has
its feelings, and I do not like this . . . .

Saturday: Keeping the
Sabbath.

Sunday: Papa has yielded the advance
and everybody is hard at work. The shipyard
is so crowded that the men hinder each other; everybody
hurrying or being hurried; the rush and confusion
and shouting and wrangling are astonishing to
our family, who have always been used to a quiet,
country life.

It was from this germ that in a later day grew the
diaries of Adam and Eve, though nothing very satisfactory
ever came of this preliminary attempt. The author
had faith in it, however. To Bliss he wrote:

I mean to take plenty of time
and pains with the Noah’s Ark book;
maybe it will be several years
before it is all written, but it will
be a perfect lightning striker
when it is done.

Page 244

You can have the first say (that is
plain enough) on that or any other book I may
prepare for the press, as long as you deal in a fair,
open, and honorable way with me. I do not think
you will ever find me doing otherwise with you.
I can get a book ready for you any time you want
it; but you can’t want one before this time next
year, so I have plenty of time.

Bliss was only temporarily appeased. He realized
that to get a book ready by the time he wanted it-a
book of sufficient size and importance to maintain
the pace set by the Innocents meant rather more immediate
action than his author seemed to contemplate.
Futhermore, he knew that other publishers were besieging
the author of the Innocents; a disquieting thought.
In early July, when Mr. Langdon’s condition had
temporarily improved, Bliss had come to Elmira and
proposed a book which should relate the author’s
travels and experiences in the Far West. It was
an inviting subject, and Clemens, by this time more
attracted by the idea of authorship and its rewards,
readily enough agreed to undertake the volume.
He had been offered half profits, and suggested that
the new contract be arranged upon these terms.
Bliss, figuring on a sale of 100,000 copies, proposed
seven and one-half per cent. royalty as an equivalent,
and the contract was so arranged. In after-years,
when the cost of manufacture and paper had become
greatly reduced, Clemens, with but a confused notion
of business details, believed he had been misled by
Bliss in this contract, and was bitter and resentful
accordingly. The figures remain, however, to
show that Bliss dealt fairly. Seven and one-half
per cent. of a subscription book did represent half
profits up to 100,000 copies when the contract was
drawn; but it required ten years to sell that quantity,
and in that time conditions had changed. Bliss
could hardly foresee that these things would be so,
and as he was dead when the book touched the 100,000
mark he could not explain or readjust matters, whatever
might have been his inclination.

Clemens was pleased enough with the contract when
it was made. To Orion he wrote July 15 (1870):

Per contract I must have another six-hundred-page
book ready for my publisher January 1st, and I
only began it to-day. The subject of it is
a secret, because I may possibly change it. But
as it stands I propose to do up Nevada and California,
beginning with the trip across the country in
the stage. Have you a memorandum of the route
we took, or the names of any of the stations we
stopped at? Do you remember any of the scenes,
names, incidents, or adventures of the coach trip?—­for
I remember next to nothing about the matter. Jot
down a foolscap page of items for me. I wish
I could have two days’ talk with you.

I suppose I am to get the
biggest copyright this time ever paid on a
subscription book in this
country.

The work so promptly begun made little progress.
Hard days of illness and sorrow followed, and it was
not until September that it was really under way.
His natural enthusiasm over any new undertaking possessed
him. On the 4th he wrote Bliss:

Page 245

During the past week I have written the first four
chapters of the book, and I tell you ‘The Innocents
Abroad’ will have to get up early to beat it.
It will be a book that will jump straight into continental
celebrity the first month it is issued.

He prophesied a sale of 90,000 copies during the first
twelve months and declared, “I see the capabilities
of the subject.”

But further disasters, even then impending, made continued
effort impossible; the prospect of the new book for
a time became gloomy, the idea of it less inspiring.
Other plans presented themselves, and at one time
he thought of letting the Galaxy publishers get out
a volume of his sketches. In October he wrote
Bliss that he was “driveling along tolerably
fair on the book, getting off from twelve to twenty
pages of manuscript a day.” Bliss naturally
discouraged the Galaxy idea, and realizing that the
new book might be long delayed, agreed to get out a
volume of miscellany sufficiently large and important
for subscription sales. He was doubtful of the
wisdom of this plan, and when Clemens suddenly proposed
a brand-new scheme his publisher very readily agreed
to hold back the publication of Sketches indefinitely.

The new book was to be adventures in the diamond mines
of South Africa, then newly opened and of wide public
interest. Clemens did not propose to visit the
mines himself, but to let another man do the traveling,
make the notes, and write or tell him the story, after
which Clemens would enlarge and elaborate it in his
own fashion. His adaptation of the letters of
Professor Ford, a year earlier, had convinced him that
his plan would work out successfully on a larger scale;
he fixed upon his old friend, J. H. Riley, of Washington—­["Riley-Newspaper
Correspondent.” See Sketches.]—­(earlier
of San Francisco), as the proper person to do the
traveling. At the end of November he wrote Bliss:

I have put my greedy hands upon the
best man in America for my purpose, and shall
start him to the diamond field in South Africa within
a fortnight at my expense . . . that the book will
have a perfectly beautiful sale.

He suggested that Bliss advance Riley’s expense
money, the amount to be deducted from the first royalty
returns; also he proposed an increased royalty, probably
in view of the startling splendor of the new idea.
Bliss was duly impressed, and the agreement was finally
made on a basis of eight and one-half per cent., with
an advance of royalty sufficient to see Riley to South
Africa and return.

Clemens had not yet heard from Riley definitely when
he wrote his glowing letter to Bliss. He took
it for granted that Riley, always an adventurous sort,
would go. When Riley wrote him that he felt morally
bound to the Alta, of which he was then Washington
correspondent, also in certain other directions till
the end of the session, Clemens wrote him at great
length, detailing his scheme in full and urging him
to write instantly to the Alta and others, asking
a release on the ground of being offered a rare opportunity
to improve his fortunes.

Page 246

You know right well that I would not have you depart
a hair from any obligation for any money. The,
boundless confidence that I have in you is born of
a conviction of your integrity in small as well as
in great things. I know plenty of men whose integrity
I would trust to here, but not off yonder in Africa.

His proposal, in brief, to Riley was that the latter
should make the trip to Africa without expense to
himself, collect memoranda, and such diamond mines
as might be found lying about handy. Upon his
return he was to take up temporary residence in the
Clemens household until the book was finished, after
which large benefits were to accrue to everybody concerned.
In the end Riley obtained a release from his obligations
and was off for the diamond mines and fortune.

Poor fellow! He was faithful in his mission,
and it is said that he really located a mining claim
that would have made him and his independent for all
time to come; but returning home with his precious
memoranda and the news of good fortune, he accidentally
wounded himself with a fork while eating; blood-poisoning
set in (they called it cancer then), and he was only
able to get home to die. His memoranda were never
used, his mining claim was never identified. Certainly,
death was closely associated with Mark Twain’s
fortunes during those earlier days of his married
life.

On the whole the Buffalo residence was mainly a gloomy
one; its ventures were attended by ill-fortune.
For some reason Mark Twain’s connection with
the Express, while it had given the paper a wide reputation,
had not largely increased its subscription. Perhaps
his work on it was too varied and erratic. Nasby,
who had popularized the Toledo Blade, kept steadily
to one line. His farmer public knew always just
what to expect when their weekly edition arrived.

Clemens and his wife dreamed of a new habitation,
and new faces and surroundings. They agreed to
offer their home and his interests in the Express
for sale. They began to talk of Hartford, where
Twichell lived, and where Orion Clemens and his wife
had recently located.

Mark Twain’s new fortunes had wrought changes
in the affairs of his relatives. Already, before
his marriage, he had prospected towns here and there
with a view to finding an Eastern residence for his
mother and sister, and he had kept Orion’s welfare
always in mind. When Pamela and her daughter
came to his wedding he told them of a little city by
the name of Fredonia (New York), not far from Buffalo,
where he thought they might find a pleasant home.

“I went in there by night and out by night,”
he said, “so I saw none of it, but I had an
intelligent, attractive audience. Prospect Fredonia
and let me know what it is like. Try to select
a place where a good many funerals pass. Ma likes
funerals. If you can pick a good funeral corner
she will be happy.”

Page 247

It was in her later life that Jane Clemens had developed
this particular passion. She would consult the
morning paper for any notice of obsequies and attend
those that were easy of access. Watching the processions
go by gave her a peculiar joy. Mrs. Moffett and
her daughter did go to Fredonia immediately following
the wedding. They found it residentially attractive,
and rented a house before returning to St. Louis, a
promptness that somewhat alarmed the old lady, who
did not altogether fancy the idea of being suddenly
set down in a strange house, in a strange land, even
though it would be within hailing distance of Sam and
his new wife. Perhaps the Fredonia funerals were
sufficiently numerous and attractive, for she soon
became attached to the place, and entered into the
spirit of the life there, joining its temperance crusades,
and the like, with zest and enjoyment.

Onion remained in St. Louis, but when Bliss established
a paper called The Publisher, and wanted an editor,
he was chosen for the place, originally offered to
his brother; the latter, writing to Onion, said:

If you take the place with an air of perfect confidence
in yourself, never once letting anything show in your
bearing but a quiet, modest, entire, and perfect confidence
in your ability to do pretty much anything in the
world, Bliss will think you are the very man he needs;
but don’t show any shadow of timidity or unsoldierly
diffidence, for that sort of thing is fatal to advancement.

I warn you thus because you are naturally given to
knocking your pot over in this way, when a little
judicious conduct would make it boil.

LXXXI

SOME FURTHER LITERARY MATTERS

Meantime The Innocents Abroad had continued to prosper.
Its author ranked mainly as a humorist, but of such
colossal proportions that his contemporaries had seemed
to dwindle; the mighty note of the “Frog of
Calaveras” had dwarfed a score of smaller peepers.
At the end of a year from its date of publication
the book had sold up to 67,000 and was continuing
at the rate of several thousand monthly.

“You are running it in staving, tiptop, first-class
style,” Clemens wrote to Bliss. “On
the average ten people a day come and hunt me up to
tell me I am a benefactor! I guess that is a
part of the program we didn’t expect, in the
first place.”

Apparently the book appealed to readers of every grade.
One hundred and fifteen copies were in constant circulation
at the Mercantile Library, in New York, while in the
most remote cabins of America it was read and quoted.
Jack Van Nostrand, making a long horseback tour of
Colorado, wrote:

I stopped a week ago in a ranch but a hundred miles
from nowhere. The occupant had just two books:
the Bible and The Innocents Abroad—­the
former in good repair.

Across the ocean the book had found no less favor,
and was being translated into many and strange tongues.
By what seems now some veritable magic its author’s
fame had become literally universal. The consul
at Hongkong, discussing English literature with a Chinese
acquaintance, a mandarin, mentioned The Pilgrim’s
Progress.

Page 248

“Yes, indeed, I have read it!” the mandarin
said, eagerly. “We are enjoying it in China,
and shall have it soon in our own language. It
is by Mark Twain.”

In England the book had an amazing vogue from the
beginning, and English readers were endeavoring to
outdo the Americans in appreciation. Indeed,
as a rule, English readers of culture, critical readers,
rose to an understanding of Mark Twain’s literary
value with greater promptness than did the same class
of readers at home. There were exceptions, of
course. There were English critics who did not
take Mark Twain seriously, there were American critics
who did. Among the latter was a certain William
Ward, an editor of a paper down in Macon, Georgia—­The
Beacon. Ward did not hold a place with the great
magazine arbiters of literary rank. He was only
an obscure country editor, but he wrote like a prophet.
His article—­too long to quote in full—­concerned
American humorists in general, from Washington Irving,
through John Phoenix, Philander Doesticks, Sut Lovingwood,
Artemus Ward, Josh Billings and Petroleum V. Nasby,
down to Mark Twain. With the exception of the
first and last named he says of them:

They have all had, or will have, their
day. Some of them are resting beneath the
sod, and others still live whose work will scarcely
survive them. Since Irving no humorist in prose
has held the foundation of a permanent fame except
it be Mark Twain, and this, as in the case of
Irving, is because he is a pure writer. Aside
from any subtle mirth that lurks through his composition,
the grace and finish of his more didactic and
descriptive sentences indicate more than mediocrity.

The writer then refers to Mark Twain’s description
of the Sphinx, comparing it with Bulwer’s, which
he thinks may have influenced it. He was mistaken
in this, for Clemens had not read Bulwer—­never
could read him at any length.

Of the English opinions, that of The Saturday Review
was perhaps most doubtful. It came along late
in 1870, and would hardly be worth recalling if it
were not for a resulting, or collateral, interest.
Clemens saw notice of this review before he saw the
review itself. A paragraph in the Boston Advertiser
spoke of The Saturday Review as treating the absurdities
of the Innocents from a serious standpoint. The
paragraph closed:

We can imagine the delight of the humorist
in reading this tribute to his power; and indeed
it is so amusing in itself that he can hardly
do better than reproduce the article in full in his
next monthly “Memoranda.”

The old temptation to hoax his readers prompted Mark
Twain to “reproduce” in the Galaxy, not
the Review article, which he had not yet seen, but
an imaginary Review article, an article in which the
imaginary reviewer would be utterly devoid of any
sense of humor and treat the most absurd incidents
of The New Pilgrim’s Progress as if set down
by the author in solemn and serious earnest.
The pretended review began:

Page 249

Lord Macaulay died too soon. We
never felt this so deeply as when we finished
the last chapter of the above-named extravagant work.
Macaulay died too soon; for none but he could mete
out complete and comprehensive justice to the
insolence, the impudence, the presumption, the
mendacity, and, above all, the majestic ignorance
of this author.

The review goes on to cite cases of the author’s
gross deception. It says:

Let the cultivated English student of
human nature picture to himself this Mark Twain
as a person capable of doing the following described
things; and not only doing them, but, with incredible
innocence, printing them tranquilly and calmly
in a book. For instance:

He states that he entered
a hair-dresser’s in Paris to get a shave,
and the first “rake”
the barber gave him with his razor it loosened
his “hide,” and
lifted him out of the chair.

This is unquestionably extravagant.
In Florence he was so annoyed by beggars that
he pretends to have seized and eaten one in a frantic
spirit of revenge. There is, of course, no truth
in this. He gives at full length the theatrical
program, seventeen or eighteen hundred years old,
which he professes to have found in the ruins
of the Colosseum, among the dirt-and mold and rubbish.
It is a sufficient comment upon this subject to
remark that even a cast- iron program would not
have lasted so long under the circumstances.

There were two and one-half pages of this really delightful
burlesque which the author had written with huge-enjoyment,
partly as a joke on the Review, partly to trick American
editors, who he believed would accept it as a fresh
and startling proof of the traditional English lack
of humor.

But, as in the early sage-brush hoaxes, he rather
overdid the thing. Readers and editors readily
enough accepted it as genuine, so far as having come
from The Saturday Review; but most of them, regarded
it as a delicious bit of humor which Mark Twain himself
had taken seriously, and was therefore the one sold.
This was certainly startling, and by no means gratifying.
In the next issue he undertook that saddest of all
performances with tongue or pen: he explained
his joke, and insisted on the truth of the explanation.
Then he said:

If any man doubts my word now I will
kill him. No, I will not kill him; I will
win his money. I will bet him twenty to one, and
let any New York publisher hold the stakes, that
the statements I have above made as to the authorship
of the article in question are entirely true.

But the Cincinnati Enquirer persisted in continuing
the joke—­in “rubbing it in,”
as we say now. The Enquirer declared that Mark
Twain had been intensely mortified at having been
so badly taken in; that his explanation in the Galaxy
was “ingenious, but unfortunately not true.”
The Enquirer maintained that The Saturday Review of
October 8, 1870, did contain the article exactly as
printed in the “Memoranda,” and advised
Mark Twain to admit that he was sold, and say no more
about it.

Page 250

This was enraging. Mark Twain had his own ideas
as to how far a joke might be carried without violence,
and this was a good way beyond the limits. He
denounced the Enquirer’s statement as a “pitiful,
deliberate falsehood,” in his anger falling
into the old-time phrasing of newspaper editorial
abuse. He offered to bet them a thousand dollars
in cash that they could not prove their assertions,
and asked pointedly, in conclusion: “Will
they swallow that falsehood ignominiously, or will
they send an agent to the Galaxy office? I think
the Cincinnati Enquirer must be edited by children.”
He promised that if they did not accept his financial
proposition he would expose them in the next issue.

The incident closed there. He was prevented,
by illness in his household, from contributing to
the next issue, and the second issue following was
his final “Memoranda” installment.
So the matter perished and was forgotten. It
was his last editorial hoax. Perhaps he concluded
that hoaxes in any form were dangerous playthings;
they were too likely to go off at the wrong end.

It was with the April number (1871) that he concluded
his relations with the Galaxy. In a brief valedictory
he gave his reasons:

I have now written for the Galaxy a
year. For the last eight months, with hardly
an interval, I have had for my fellows and comrades,
night and day, doctors and watchers of the sick!
During these eight months death has taken two
members of my home circle and malignantly threatened
two others. All this I have experienced, yet
all the time have been under contract to furnish
“humorous” matter, once a month, for
this magazine. I am speaking the exact truth in
the above details. Please to put yourself
in my place and contemplate the grisly grotesqueness
of the situation. I think that some of the
“humor” I have written during this period
could have been injected into a funeral sermon
without disturbing the solemnity of the occasion.

The “Memoranda” will cease
permanently with this issue of the magazine.
To be a pirate on a low salary, and with no share in
the profits of the business, used to be my idea
of an uncomfortable occupation, but I have other
views now. To be a monthly humorist in a
cheerless time is drearier.

Without doubt he felt a glad relief in being rid of
this recurrent, imperative demand. He wrote to
Orion that he had told the Galaxy people he would
not write another article, long or short, for less
than $500, and preferred not to do it at all.

The Galaxy department and the work on the Express
were Mark Twain’s farewell to journalism; for
the “Memoranda” was essentially journalistic,
almost as much so, and as liberally, as his old-time
Enterprise position. Apparently he wrote with
absolute freedom, unhampered by editorial policy or
restriction. The result was not always pleasant,
and it was not always refined. We may be certain
that it was because of Mrs. Clemens’s heavy
burdens that year, and her consequent inability to
exert a beneficent censorship, that more than one—­more
than a dozen—­of the “Memoranda”
contributions were permitted to see the light of print.

Page 251

As a whole, the literary result of Mark Twain’s
Buffalo period does not reach the high standard of
The Innocents Abroad. It was a retrogression
—­in some measure a return to his earlier
form. It had been done under pressure, under
heavy stress of mind, as he said. Also there was
another reason; neither the subject treated nor the
environment of labor had afforded that lofty inspiration
which glorified every step of the Quaker City journey.
Buffalo was a progressive city—­a beautiful
city, as American cities go—­but it was
hardly an inspiring city for literature, and a dull,
dingy newspaper office was far, very far, from the
pleasant decks of the Quaker City, the camp-fires
of Syria, the blue sky and sea of the Medit&ranean.

LXXXII

Thewritingof “Roughingit”

The third book published by Mark Twain was not the
Western book he was preparing for Bliss. It was
a small volume, issued by Sheldon & Co., entitled
Mark Twain’s Autobiography (Burlesque) and First
Romance. The Romance was the “Awful, Terrible
Medieval Romance” which had appeared in the
Express at the beginning of 1870. The burlesque
autobiography had not previously appeared. The
two made a thin little book, which, in addition to
its literary features, had running through it a series
of full-page, irrelevant pictures—–­cartoons
of the Erie Railroad Ring, presented as illustrations
of a slightly modified version of “The House
That Jack Built.” The “House”
was the Erie headquarters, the purpose being to illustrate
the swindling methods of the Ring. The faces of
Jay Gould, James Fisk, Jr., John T. Hoffman, and others
of the combination, are chiefly conspicuous.
The publication was not important, from any standpoint.
Literary burlesque is rarely important, and it was
far from Mark Twain’s best form of expression.
A year or two later he realized the mistake of this
book, bought in the plates and destroyed them.

Meantime the new Western book was at a standstill.
To Orion, in March, he wrote:

I am still nursing Livy night and day.
I am nearly worn out. We shall go to Elmira
ten days hence (if Livy can travel on a mattress then),
and stay there until I finish the California book,
say three months. But I can’t begin
work right away when I get there; must have a
week’s rest, for I have been through thirty days’
terrific siege.

He promised to forward some of the manuscript soon.

Hold on four or five days
and I will see if I can get a few chapters
fixed to send to Bliss . .
. .

I have offered this house and the Express
for sale, and when we go to Elmira we leave here
for good. I shall not select a new home till
the book is finished, but we have little doubt that
Hartford will be the place.

He disposed of his interest in the Express in April,
at a sacrifice of $10,000 on the purchase price.
Mrs. Clemens and the baby were able to travel, and
without further delay he took them to Elmira, to Quarry
Farm.

Page 252

Quarry Farm, the home of Mrs. Clemens’s sister,
Mrs. Theodore Crane, is a beautiful hilltop, with
a wide green slope, overlooking the hazy city and
the Chemung River, beyond which are the distant hills.
It was bought quite incidentally by Mr. and Mrs. Langdon,
who, driving by one evening, stopped to water the
horses and decided that it would make a happy summer
retreat, where the families could combine their housekeeping
arrangements during vacation days. When the place
had first been purchased, they had debated on a name
for it. They had tried several, among them “Go-as-you-please
Hall,” “Crane’s Nest,” and
had finally agreed upon “Rest and Be Thankful.”
But this was only its official name. There was
an abandoned quarry up the hill, a little way from
the house, and the title suggested by Thomas K. Beecher
came more naturally to the tongue. The place
became Quarry Farm, and so remains.

Clemens and his wife had fully made up their minds
to live in Hartford. They had both conceived
an affection for the place, Clemens mainly because
of Twichell, while both of them yearned for the congenial
literary and social atmosphere, and the welcome which
they felt awaited them. Hartford was precisely
what Buffalo in that day was not—­a home
for the literary man. It held a distinguished
group of writers, most of whom the Clemenses already
knew. Furthermore, with Bliss as publisher of
the Mark Twain books, it held their chief business
interests.

Their plans for going were not very definite as to
time. Clemens found that his work went better
at the farm, and that Mrs. Clemens and the delicate
baby daily improved. They decided to remain at
Quarry Farm for the summer, their first summer in
that beautiful place which would mean so much to them
in the years to come.

It was really Joe Goodman, as much as anything, that
stirred a fresh enthusiasm in the new book. Goodman
arrived just when the author’s spirits were
at low ebb.

“Joe,” he said, “I guess I’m
done for. I don’t appear to be able to get
along at all with my work, and what I do write does
not seem valuable. I’m afraid I’ll
never be able to reach the standard of ’The Innocents
Abroad’ again. Here is what I have written,
Joe. Read it, and see if that is your opinion.”

Goodman took the manuscript and seated himself in
a chair, while Clemens went over to a table and pretended
to work. Goodman read page after page, critically,
and was presently absorbed in it. Clemens watched
him furtively, till he could stand it no longer.
Then he threw down his pen, exclaiming:

“I knew it! I knew it! I am writing
nothing but rot. You have sat there all this
time reading without a smile, and pitying the ass I
am making of myself. But I am not wholly to blame.
I am not strong enough to fight against fate.
I have been trying to write a funny book, with dead
people and sickness everywhere. Mr. Langdon died
first, then a young lady in our house, and now Mrs.
Clemens and the baby have been at the point of death
all winter! Oh, Joe, I wish to God I could die
myself!”

Page 253

“Mark,” said Joe, “I was reading
critically, not for amusement, and so far as I have
read, and can judge, this is one of the best things
you have ever written. I have found it perfectly
absorbing. You are doing a great book!”

Clemens knew that Goodman never spoke except from
conviction, and the verdict was to him like a message
of life handed down by an archangel. He was a
changed man instantly. He was all enthusiasm,
full of his subject, eager to go on. He proposed
to pay Goodman a salary to stay there and keep him
company and furnish him with inspiration—­the
Pacific coast atmosphere and vernacular, which he
feared had slipped away from him. Goodman declined
the salary, but extended his visit as long as his plans
would permit, and the two had a happy time together,
recalling old Comstock days. Every morning, for
a month or more, they used to tramp over the farm.
They fell into the habit of visiting the old quarry
and pawing over the fragments in search of fossil
specimens. Both of them had a poetic interest
in geology, its infinite remotenesses and its testimonies.
Without scientific knowledge, they took a deep pleasure
in accumulating a collection, which they arranged
on boards torn from an old fence, until they had enough
specimens to fill a small museum. They imagined
they could distinguish certain geological relations
and families, and would talk about trilobites, the
Old Red Sandstone period, and the azoic age, or follow
random speculation to far-lying conclusions, developing
vague humors of phrase and fancy, having altogether
a joyful good time.

Another interest that developed during Goodman’s
stay was in one Ruloff, who was under death sentence
for a particularly atrocious murder. The papers
were full of Ruloff’s prodigious learning.
It was said that he had in preparation a work showing
the unity of all languages. Goodman and Clemens
agreed that Ruloff’s death would be a great loss
to mankind, even though he was clearly a villain and
deserved his sentence. They decided that justice
would be served just as well if some stupid person
were hung in his place, and following out this fancy
Clemens one morning put aside his regular work and
wrote an article to the Tribune, offering to supply
a substitute for Ruloff. He signed it simply “Samuel
Langhorne,” and it was published as a serious
communication, without comment, so far as the Tribune
was concerned. Other papers, however, took it
up and it was widely copied and commented upon.
Apparently no one ever identified, Mark Twain with
the authorship of the letter, which, by the way, does
not appear to have prolonged Ruloff’s earthly
usefulness.—­[The reader will find the Ruloff
letter in full under Appendix K, at the end of last
volume.]

Life at the farm may have furnished agricultural inspiration,
for Clemens wrote something about Horace Greeley’s
farming, also a skit concerning Henry Ward Beecher’s
efforts in that direction. Of Mr. Beecher’s
farming he said:

Page 254

“His strawberries would be a comfortable success
if robins would eat turnips.”

The article amused Beecher, and perhaps Greeley was
amused too, for he wrote:

Mark,—­You are mistaken
as to my criticisms on your farming. I never
publicly made any, while you have undertaken to tell
the exact cost per pint of my potatoes and cabbages,
truly enough the inspiration of genius. If
you will really betake yourself to farming, or
even to telling what you know about it, rather than
what you don’t know about mine, I will not
only refrain from disparaging criticism, but will
give you my blessing.

Yours, HoraceGreeley.

The letter is in Mr. Greeley’s characteristic
scrawl, and no doubt furnished inspiration for the
turnip story in ‘Roughing It’, also the
model for the pretended facsimile of Greeley’s
writing.

Altogether that was a busy, enterprising summer at
Quarry Farm. By the middle of May, Clemens wrote
to Bliss that he had twelve hundred manuscript pages
of the new book already written, and that he was turning
out the remainder at the rate of from thirty to sixty-five
per day. He was in high spirits by this time.
The family health had improved, and prospects were
bright.

I have enough manuscript on hand now to make (allowing
for engravings) about four hundred pages of the book,
consequently am two-thirds done. I intended to
run up to Hartford about the middle of the week and
take it along, but I find myself so thoroughly interested
in my work now (a thing I have not experienced for
months) that I can’t bear to lose a single moment
of the inspiration. So I will stay here and peg
away as long as it lasts. My present idea is
to write as much more as I have already written, and
then collect from the mass the very best chapters and
discard the rest. When I get it done I want to
see the man who will begin to read it and not finish
it. Nothing grieves me now; nothing troubles
me, nothing bothers me or gets my attention. I
don’t think of anything but the book, and don’t
have an hour’s unhappiness about anything, and
don’t care two cents whether school keeps or
not. The book will be done soon now. It
will be a starchy book; the dedication will be worth
the price of the volume. Thus:

TothelateCainthisbookisdedicated

not on account of respect for his memory,
for it merits little respect; not on account of
sympathy for him, for his bloody deed places him
without the pale of sympathy, strictly speaking, but
out of a mere humane commiseration for him, in
that it was his misfortune to live in a dark age
that knew not the beneficent insanity plea.

Probably Mrs. Clemens diverted this picturesque dedication
in favor of the Higbie inscription, or perhaps the
author never really intended the literary tribute
to Cain. The impulse that inspired it, however,
was characteristic.

Page 255

In a postscript to this letter he adds:

My stock is looking up. I am getting
the bulliest offers for books and almanacs; am
flooded with lecture invitations, and one periodical
offers me $6,000 cash for twelve articles of any length,
and on any subject, treated humorously or otherwise.

He set in to make hay while the sun was shining.
In addition to the California book, which was now
fast nearing completion, he discussed a scheme with
Goodman for a six-hundred-page work which they were
to do jointly; he planned and wrote one or two scenes
from a Western play, to be built from episodes in
the new book (one of them was the “Arkansas”
incident, related in Chapter XXXI); he perfected one
of his several inventions—­an automatically
adjusting vest-strap; he wrote a number of sketches,
made an occasional business trip to New York and Hartford;
prospected the latter place for a new home. The
shadow which had hung over the sojourn in Buffalo
seemed to have lifted.

He had promised Bliss some contributions for his new
paper, and in June he sent three sketches. In
an accompanying letter he says:

Here are three articles which you may
have if you will pay $125 for the lot. If
you don’t want them I’ll sell them to the
Galaxy, but not for a cent less than three times
the money.... If you take them pay one-tenth
of the $125 in weekly instalments to Orion till he
has received it all.

He reconsidered his resolution not to lecture again,
and closed with Redpath for the coming season.
He found himself in a lecture-writing fever.
He wrote three of them in succession: one on Artemus
Ward, another on “Reminiscences of Some Pleasant
Characters I Have Met,” and a third one based
on chapters from the new book. Of the “Reminiscence”
lecture he wrote Redpath:

“It covers my whole acquaintance; kings, lunatics,
idiots, and all.” Immediately afterward
he wrote that he had prepared still another lecture,
“title to be announced later.”

“During July I’ll decide which one I like
best,” he said. He instructed Redpath not
to make engagements for him to lecture in churches.
“I never made a success of a lecture in a church
yet. People are afraid to laugh in a church.”

Redpath was having difficulties in arranging a circuit
to suit him. Clemens had prejudices against certain
towns and localities, prejudices that were likely
to change overnight. In August he wrote:

Dearred,—­I am
different from other women; my mind changes oftener.
People who have no mind can easily be stead fast
and firm, but when a man is loaded down to the
guards with it, as I am, every heavy sea of foreboding
or inclination, maybe of indolence, shifts the cargo.
See? Therefore, if you will notice, one week
I am likely to give rigid instructions to confine
me to New England; the next week send me to Arizona;
the next week withdraw my name; the next week give

Page 256

you full, untrammeled swing; and the week following
modify it. You must try to keep the run of
my mind, Redpath that is your business, being
the agent, and it always was too many for me....
Now about the West this week, I am willing that
you shall retain all the Western engagements.
But what I shall want next week is still with God.
Yours,
mark.

He was in Hartford when this letter was written, arranging
for residence there and the removal of his belongings.
He finally leased the fine Hooker house on Ford Street,
in that pleasant seclusion known as Nook Farm—­the
literary part of Hartford, which included the residence
of Charles Dudley Warner and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
He arranged for possession of the premises October
1st. So the new home was settled upon; then learning
that Nasby was to be in Boston, he ran over to that
city for a few days of recreation after his season’s
labors.

Preparations for removal to Hartford were not delayed.
The Buffalo property was disposed of, the furnishings
were packed and shipped away. The house which
as bride and groom they had entered so happily was
left empty and deserted, never to be entered by them
again. In the year and a half of their occupancy
it had seen well-nigh all the human round, all that
goes to make up the happiness and the sorrow of life.

LXXXIII

LECTURING DAYS

Life in Hartford, in the autumn of 1871, began in
the letter, rather than in the spirit. The newcomers
were received with a wide, neighborly welcome, but
the disorder of establishment and the almost immediate
departure of the head of the household on a protracted
lecturing tour were disquieting things; the atmosphere
of the Clemens home during those early Hartford days
gave only a faint promise of its future loveliness.

As in a far later period, Mark Twain had resorted
to lecturing to pay off debt. He still owed a
portion of his share in the Express; also he had been
obliged to obtain an advance from the lecture bureau.
He dreaded, as always, the tedium of travel, the clatter
of hotel life, the monotony of entertainment, while,
more than most men, he loved the tender luxury of
home. It was only that he could not afford to
lose the profit offered on the platform.

His season opened at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, October
16th, and his schedule carried him hither and thither,
to and fro, over distances that lie between Boston
and Chicago. There were opportunities to run into
Hartford now and then, when he was not too far away,
and in November he lectured there on Artemus Ward.

He changed his entertainment at least twice that season.
He began with the “Reminiscences,” the
lecture which he said would treat of all those whom
he had met, “idiots, lunatics, and kings,”
but he did not like it, or it did not go well.
He wrote Redpath of the Artemus Ward address:

Page 257

“It suits me, and I’ll never deliver the
nasty, nauseous ‘Reminiscences’ any more.”

But the Ward lecture was good for little more than
a month, for on December 8th he wrote again:

Notify all hands that from
this time I shall talk nothing but
selections from my forthcoming
book, ‘Roughing It’. Tried it twice
last night; suits me tiptop.

And somewhat later:

Had a splendid time with a splendid
audience in Indianapolis last night; a perfectly
jammed house, just as I have all the time out here....
I don’t care now to have any appointments canceled.
I’ll even “fetch” those Dutch
Pennsylvanians with this lecture.

Have paid up $4,000 indebtedness.
You are the last on my list.
Shall begin to pay you in
a few days, and then I shall be a free man
again.

Undoubtedly he reveled in the triumphs of a platform
tour, though at no time did he regard it as a pleasure
excursion. During those early weeks the proofs
of his new book, chasing him from place to place, did
not add to his comfort. Still, with large, substantial
rewards in hand and in prospect, one could endure
much.

In the neighborhood of Boston there were other compensations.
He could spend a good part of his days at the Lyceum
headquarters, in School Street, where there was always
congenial fellowship—­Nasby, Josh Billings,
and the rest of the peripatetic group that about the
end of the year collected there. Their lectures
were never tried immediately in Boston, but in the
outlying towns; tried and perfected—­or discarded.
When the provincial audiences were finally satisfied,
then the final. test in the Boston Music Hall was
made, and if this proved successful the rest of the
season was safe. Redpath’s lecturers put
up at Young’s Hotel, and spent their days at
the bureau, smoking and spinning yarns, or talking
shop. Early in the evening they scattered to the
outlying towns, Lowell, Lexington, Concord, New Bedford.
There is no such a condition to-day: lecturers
are few, lecture bureaus obscure; there are no great
reputations made on the platform.

Neither is there any such distinct group of humorists
as the one just mentioned. Humor has become universal
since then. Few writers of this age would confess
to taking their work so seriously as to be at all times
unsmiling in it; only about as many, in fact, as in
that day would confess to taking their work so lightly
that they could regard life’s sterner phases
and philosophies with a smile.

Josh Billings was one of the gentlest and loveliest
of our pioneers of laughter. The present generation
is not overfamiliar even with his name, but both the
name and sayings of that quaint soul were on everybody’s
lips at the time of which we are writing. His
true name was Henry W. Shaw, and he was a genuine,
smiling philosopher, who might have built up a more
permanent and serious reputation had he not been induced

Page 258

to disfigure his maxims with ridiculous spelling in
order to popularize them and make them bring a living
price. It did not matter much with Nasby’s
work. An assumed illiteracy belonged with the
side of life which he presented; but it is pathetic
now to consider some of the really masterly sayings
of Josh Billings presented in that uncouth form which
was regarded as a part of humor a generation ago.
Even the aphorisms that were essentially humorous
lose value in that degraded spelling.

“When a man starts down hill everything is greased
for the occasion,” could hardly be improved
upon by distorted orthography, and here are a few
more gems which have survived that deadly blight.

“Some folks mistake vivacity for wit; whereas
the difference between vivacity and wit is the same
as the difference between the lightning-bug and the
lightning.”

“Don’t take the bull by the horns-take
him by the tail; then you can let go when you want
to.”

“The difficulty is not that we know so much,
but that we know so much that isn’t so.”

Josh Billings, Nasby, and Mark Twain were close friends.
They had themselves photographed in a group, and there
was always some pleasantry going on among them.
Josh Billings once wrote on “Lekturing,”
and under the head of “Rule Seven,” which
treated of unwisdom of inviting a lecturer to a private
house, he said:

Think of asking Mark Twain home with
yu, for instance. Yure good wife has put
her house in apple-pie order for the ockashun; everything
is just in the right place. Yu don’t smoke
in yure house, never. Yu don’t put
yure feet on the center-table, yu don’t skatter
the nuzepapers all over the room, in utter confushion:
order and ekonemy governs yure premises.
But if yu expeckt Mark Twain to be happy, or even
kumfortable yu hav got to buy a box of cigars worth
at least seventeen dollars and yu hav got to move all
the tender things out ov yure parlor. Yu
hav got to skatter all the latest papers around
the room careless, you hav got to hav a pitcher ov
icewater handy, for Mark is a dry humorist. Yu
hav got to ketch and tie all yure yung ones, hed
and foot, for Mark luvs babys only in theory;
yu hav got to send yure favorite kat over to the nabors
and hide yure poodle. These are things that
hav to be done, or Mark will pak hiz valise with
hiz extry shirt collar and hiz lektur on the Sandwich
Islands, and travel around yure streets, smoking and
reading the sighns over the store doorways untill
lektur time begins.

As we-are not likely to touch upon Mark Twain’s
lecturing, save only lightly, hereafter, it may be
as well to say something of his method at this period.
At all places visited by lecturers there was a committee,
and it was the place of the chairman to introduce the
lecturer, a privilege which he valued, because it
gave him a momentary association with distinction
and fame. Clemens was a great disappointment to
these officials. He had learned long ago that

Page 259

he could introduce himself more effectively than any
one else. His usual formula was to present himself
as the chairman of the committee, introducing the lecturer
of the evening; then, with what was in effect a complete
change of personality, to begin his lecture.
It was always startling and amusing, always a success;
but the papers finally printed this formula, which
took the freshness out of it, so that he had to invent
others. Sometimes he got up with the frank statement
that he was introducing himself because he had never
met any one who could pay a proper tribute to his talents;
but the newspapers printed that too, and he often
rose and began with no introduction at all.

Whatever his method of beginning, Mark Twain’s
procedure probably was the purest exemplification
of the platform entertainer’s art which this
country has ever seen. It was the art that makes
you forget the artisanship, the art that made each
hearer forget that he was not being personally entertained
by a new and marvelous friend, who had traveled a
long way for his particular benefit. One listener
has written that he sat “simmering with laughter”
through what he supposed was the continuation of the
introduction, waiting for the traditional lecture to
begin, when presently the lecturer, with a bow, disappeared,
and it was over. The listener looked at his watch;
he had been there more than an hour. He thought
it could be no more than ten minutes, at most.
Many have tried to set down something of the effect
his art produced on them, but one may not clearly
convey the story of a vanished presence and a silent
voice.

There were other pleasant associations in Boston.
Howells was there, and Aldrich; also Bret Harte, who
had finished his triumphal progress across the continent
to join the Atlantic group. Clemens appears not
to have met Aldrich before, though their acquaintance
had begun a year earlier, when Aldrich, as editor
of Every Saturday, had commented on a poem entitled,
“The Three Aces,” which had appeared in
the Buffalo Express. Aldrich had assumed the
poem to be the work of Mark Twain, and had characterized
it as “a feeble imitation of Bret Harte’s
’Heathen Chinee.’” Clemens, in a
letter, had mildly protested as to the charge of authorship,
and Aldrich had promptly printed the letter with apologetic
explanation. A playful exchange of personal letters
followed, and the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

One of the letters has a special interest here.
Clemens had followed his protest with an apology for
it, asking that no further notice be taken of the
matter. Aldrich replied that it was too late to
prevent “doing him justice,” as his explanation
was already on the press, but that if Clemens insisted
he would withdraw it in the next issue. Clemens
then wrote that he did not want it withdrawn, and
explained that he hated to be accused of plagiarizing
Bret Harte, to whom he was deeply indebted for literary
schooling in the California days. Continuing he
said:

Page 260

Do you know the prettiest fancy and
the neatest that ever shot through Harte’s
brain? It was this. When they were trying
to decide upon a vignette cover for the Overland
a grizzly bear (of the arms of the State of California)
was chosen. Nahl Bros. carved him and the
page was printed with him in it.

As a bear he was a success. He
was a good bear, but then, it was objected, he
was an objectless bear—­a bear that meant
nothing, signified nothing, simply stood there,
snarling over his shoulder at nothing, and was
painfully and manifestly a boorish and ill-natured
intruder upon the fair page. All hands said
that none were satisfied; they hated badly to
give him up, and yet they hated as much to have
him there when there was no point to him. But
presently Harte took a pencil and drew two simple
lines under his feet, and behold he was a magnificent
success!—­the ancient symbol of California
savagery, snarling at the approaching type of high
and progressive civilization, the first Overland
locomotive! I just think that was nothing
less than an inspiration.—­[The “bear”
was that which has always appeared on the Overland
cover; the “two lines” formed a railway
track under his feet. Clemens’s original
letter contained crude sketches illustrating these
things.]

Among the Boston group was another Californian, Ralph
Keeler, an eccentric, gifted, and altogether charming
fellow, whom Clemens had known on the Pacific slope.
Keeler had been adopted by the Boston writers, and
was grateful and happy accordingly. He was poor
of purse, but inexhaustibly rich in the happier gifts
of fortune. He was unfailingly buoyant, light-hearted,
and hopeful. On an infinitesimal capital he had
made a tour of many lands, and had written of it for
the Atlantic. In that charmed circle he was as
overflowingly happy as if he had been admitted to
the company of the gods. Keeler was affectionately
regarded by all who knew him, and he offered a sort
of worship in return. He often accompanied Mark
Twain on his lecture engagements to the various outlying
towns, and Clemens brought him back to his hotel for
breakfast, where they had good, enjoyable talks together.
Once Keeler came eagerly to the hotel and made his
way up to Clemens’s room.

“Come with me,” he said. “Quick!”

“What is it? What’s happened?”

“Don’t wait to talk. Come with me.”

They tramped briskly through the streets till they
reached the public library, entered, Keeler leading
the way, not stopping till he faced a row of shelves
filled with books. He pointed at one of them,
his face radiant with joy.

“Look,” he said. “Do you see
it?”

Clemens looked carefully now and identified one of
the books as a still-born novel which Keeler had published.

“This is a library,” said Keeler, eagerly,
“and they’ve got it!”

His whole being was aglow with the wonder of it.
He had been investigating; the library records showed
that in the two years the book had been there it had
been taken out and read three times! It never
occurred to Clemens even to smile. Knowing Mark
Twain, one would guess that his eyes were likely to
be filled with tears.

Page 261

In his book about Mark Twain, Howells tells of a luncheon
which Keeler gave to his more famous associates—­Aldrich,
Fields, Harte, Clemens, and Howells himself—­a
merry informal occasion. Says Howells:

Nothing remains to me of the happy time
but a sense of idle and aimless and joyful talk—­play,
beginning and ending nowhere, of eager laughter,
of countless good stories from Fields, of a heat-
lightning shimmer of wit from Aldrich, of an occasional
concentration of our joint mockeries upon our host,
who took it gladly; and amid the discourse, so
little improving, but so full of good-fellowship,
Bret Harte’s leering dramatization of Clemens’s
mental attitude toward a symposium of Boston illuminates.
“Why, fellows,” he spluttered, “this
is the dream of Mark’s life,” and I remember
the glance from under Clemens’s feathery eyebrows
which betrayed his enjoyment of the fun.

Very likely Keeler gave that luncheon in celebration
of his book’s triumph; it would be like him.

Keeler’s end was a mystery. The New York
Tribune commissioned him to go to Cuba to report the
facts of some Spanish outrages. He sailed from
New York in the steamer, and was last seen alive the
night before the vessel reached Havana. He had
made no secret of his mission, but had discussed it
in his frank, innocent way. There were some Spanish
military men on the ship.

Clemens, commenting on the matter, once said:

“It may be that he was not flung into the sea,
still the belief was general that that was what had
happened.”

In his book Howells refers to the doubt with which
Mark Twain was then received by the polite culture
of Boston; which, on the other hand, accepted Bret
Harte as one of its own, forgiving even social shortcomings.

The reason is not difficult to understand. Harte
had made his appeal with legitimate fiction of the
kind which, however fresh in flavor and environment,
was of a sort to be measured and classified. Harte
spoke a language they could understand; his humor,
his pathos, his point of view were all recognizable.
It was an art already standardized by a master.
It is no reflection on the genius of Bret Harte to
liken his splendid achievements to those of Charles
Dickens. Much of Harte’s work is in no
way inferior to that of his great English prototype.
Dickens never wrote a better short story than “The
Outcasts of Poker Flats.” He never wrote
as good a short story as “The Luck of Roaring
Camp.” Boston critics promptly realized
these things and gave Harte his correct rating.
That they failed to do this with Mark Twain, lay chiefly
in the fact that he spoke to them in new and startling
tongues. His gospels were likely to be heresies;
his literary eccentricities were all unclassified.
Of the ultrafastidious set Howells tells us that Charles
Eliot Norton and Prof. Francis J. Child were
about the only ones who accorded him unqualified approval.
The others smiled and enjoyed him, but with that condescension
which the courtier is likely to accord to motley and
the cap and bells. Only the great, simple-hearted,
unbiased multitude, the public, which had no standards
but the direct appeal from one human heart to another,
could recognize immediately his mightier heritage,
could exalt and place him on the throne. LXXXIV
“Roughingit”

Page 262

Telegram to Redpath:

How in the name of God does a man find
his way from here to Amherst, and when must he
start? Give me full particulars, and send a man
with me. If I had another engagement I would
rot before I would fill it.
S. L. Clemens.

This was at the end of February, and he believed that
he was standing on the platform for the last time.
He loathed the drudgery of the work, and he considered
there was no further need. He was no longer in
debt, and his income he accounted ample. His
new book, ’Roughing It’,—­[It
was Bliss who had given the new book the title of
Roughing It. Innocents at Home had been its provision
title, certainly a misleading one, though it has been
retained in England for the second volume; for what
reason it would be difficult to explain.]—­had
had a large advance sale, and its earnings promised
to rival those of the ‘Innocents’.
He resolved in the future to confine himself to the
trade and profits of authorship.

The new book had advantages in its favor. Issued
early in the year, it was offered at the best canvassing
season; particularly so, as the author’s lectures
had prepared the public for its reception. Furthermore,
it dealt with the most picturesque phases of American
life, scenes and episodes vastly interesting at that
time, and peculiarly adapted to Mark Twain’s
literary expression. In a different way ‘Roughing
It’ is quite as remarkable as ‘The Innocents
Abroad.’ If it has less charm, it has greater
interest, and it is by no means without charm.
There is something delicious, for instance, in this
bit of pure enjoyment of the first day’s overland
travel:

It was now just dawn, and as we stretched
our cramped legs full length on the mail-sacks,
and gazed out through the windows across the wide
wastes of greensward clad in cool, powdery mist to
where there was an expectant look in the Eastern
horizon, our perfect enjoyment took the form of
a tranquil and contented ecstasy. The stage
whirled along at a spanking gait, the breeze flapping
the curtains and suspended coats in a most exhilarating
way; the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously,
the pattering of the horses’ hoofs, the
cracking of the driver’s whip, and his “Hi-yi!
g’lang!” were music; the spinning
ground and the waltzing trees appeared to give us
a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack up and
look after us with interest and envy, or something;
and as we lay and smoked the pipe of peace, and
compared all this luxury with the years of tiresome
city life that had gone before it, we felt that there
was only one complete and satisfying happiness
in the world, and we had found it.

Also, there is that lofty presentation of South Pass,
and a picture of the alkali desert, so parching, so
withering in its choking realism, that it makes the
throat ache and the tongue dry to read it. Just
a bit of the desert in passing:

Page 263

The sun beats down with a dead, blistering,
relentless malignity; the perspiration is welling
from every pore in man and beast, but scarcely
a sign of it finds its way to the surface—­it
is absorbed before it gets there; there is not
the faintest breath of air stirring; there is
not a merciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant
firmament; there is not a living creature visible in
any direction whither one searches the blank level
that stretches its monotonous miles on every hand;
there is not a sound, not a sigh, not a whisper,
not a buzz, or a whir of wings, or distant pipe of
bird; not even a sob from the lost souls that doubtless
people that dead air.

As for the humor of the book, it has been chiefly
famous for that. “Buck Fanshaw’s
Funeral” has become a classic, and the purchase
of the “Mexican Plug.” But it is
to no purpose to review the book here in detail.
We have already reviewed the life and environment
out of which it grew.

Without doubt the story would have contained more
of the poetic and contemplative, in which he was always
at his best, if the subject itself, as in the Innocents,
had lent itself oftener to this form of writing.
It was the lack of that halo perhaps which caused
the new book never quite to rank with its great forerunner
in public favor. There could hardly be any other
reason. It presented a fresher theme; it abounded
in humor; technically, it was better written; seemingly
it had all the elements of popularity and of permanence.
It did, in fact, possess these qualities, but its
sales, except during the earlier months of its canvass,
never quite equaled those of The Innocents Abroad.

‘Roughing It’ was accepted by the public
for just what it was and is, a great picture of the
Overland Pioneer days—­a marvelous picture
of frontier aspects at a time when the frontier itself,
even with its hardships and its tragedies, was little
more than a vast primal joke; when all frontiersmen
were obliged to be laughing philosophers in order
to survive the stress of its warfares.

A word here about this Western humor: It is a
distinct product. It grew out of a distinct condition—­the
battle with the frontier. The fight was so desperate,
to take it seriously was to surrender. Women laughed
that they might not weep; men, when they could no
longer swear. “Western humor” was
the result. It is the freshest, wildest humor
in the world, but there is tragedy behind it.

‘Roughing It’ presented the picture of
those early conditions with the startling vividness
and truth of a great novel, which, in effect, it was.
It was not accurate history, even of the author’s
own adventures. It was true in its aspects, rather
than in its details. The greater artist disregards
the truth of detail to render more strikingly a phase
or a condition, to produce an atmosphere, to reconstruct
a vanished time. This was what Mark Twain did
in ‘Roughing It’. He told the story
of overland travel and the frontier, for his own and
future generations, in what is essentially a picaresque
novel, a work of unperishing fiction, founded on fact.

Page 264

The sales of ‘Roughing It’ during the
first three months aggregated nearly forty thousand
copies, and the author was lavishly elate accordingly.
To Orion (who had already closed his career with Bliss,
by exercise of those hereditary eccentricities through
which he so often came to grief) he gave $1,000 out
of the first royalty check, in acknowledgment of the
memorandum book and other data which Orion had supplied.
Clemens believed the new book would sell one hundred
thousand copies within the year; but the sale diminished
presently, and at the end of the first year it was
considerably behind the Innocents for the same period.
As already stated, it required ten years for Roughing
It to reach the one-hundred-thousand mark, which the
Innocents reached in three.

LXXXV

A BIRTH, A DEATH, AND A VOYAGE

The year 1872 was an eventful one in Mark Twain’s
life. At Elmira, on March 19th, his second child,
a little girl, whom they named Susan Olivia, was born.
On June 2d, in the new home in Hartford, to which they
had recently moved, his first child, a little boy,
Langdon, died. He had never been strong, his
wavering life had often been uncertain, always more
of the spirit than the body, and in Elmira he contracted
a heavy cold, or perhaps it was diphtheria from the
beginning. In later years, whenever Clemens spoke
of the little fellow, he never failed to accuse himself
of having been the cause of the child’s death.
It was Mrs. Clemens’s custom to drive out each
morning with Langdon, and once when she was unable
to go Clemens himself went instead.

“I should not have been permitted to do it,”
he said, remembering. “I was not qualified
for any such responsibility as that. Some one
should have gone who had at least the rudiments of
a mind. Necessarily I would lose myself dreaming.
After a while the coachman looked around and noticed
that the carriage-robes had dropped away from the little
fellow, and that he was exposed to the chilly air.
He called my attention to it, but it was too late.
Tonsilitis or something of the sort set in, and he
did not get any better, so we took him to Hartford.
There it was pronounced diphtheria, and of course
he died.”

So, with or without reason, he added the blame of
another tragedy to the heavy burden of remorse which
he would go on piling up while he lived.

The blow was a terrible one to Mrs. Clemens; even
the comfort of the little new baby on her arm could
not ease the ache in her breast. It seemed to
her that death was pursuing her. In one of her
letters she says:

“I feel so often as if my path is to be lined
with graves,” and she expresses the wish that
she may drop out of life herself before her sister
and her husband—­a wish which the years would
grant.

They did not return to Elmira, for it was thought
that the air of the shore would be better for the
little girl; so they spent the summer at Saybrook,
Connecticut, at Fenwick Hall, leaving Orion and his
wife in charge of the house at Hartford.

Page 265

Beyond a few sketches, Clemens did very little literary
work that summer, but he planned a trip to Europe,
and he invented what is still known and sold as the
“Mark Twain Scrap-Book.”

He wrote to Orion of his proposed trip to England,
and dilated upon his scrap-book with considerable
enthusiasm. The idea had grown out of the inconvenience
of finding a paste-jar, and the general mussiness of
scrap-book keeping. His new plan was a self-pasting
scrap-book with the gum laid on in narrow strips,
requiring only to be dampened with a sponge or other
moist substance to be ready for the clipping.
He states that he intends to put the invention into
the hands of Slote, Woodman & Co., of whom Dan Slote,
his old Quaker City room-mate, was the senior partner,
and have it manufactured for the trade.

About this time began Mark Twain’s long and
active interest in copyright. Previously he had
not much considered the subject; he had taken it for
granted there was no step that he could take, while
international piracy was a recognized institution.
On both sides of the water books were appropriated,
often without profit, sometimes even without credit,
to the author. To tell the truth, Clemens had
at first regarded it rather in the nature of a compliment
that his books should be thought worth pirating in
England, but as time passed he realized that he was
paying heavily for this recognition. Furthermore,
he decided that he was forfeiting a right; rather
that he was being deprived of it: something which
it was in his nature to resent.

When ‘Roughing It’ had been ready for
issue he agreed with Bliss that they should try the
experiment of copyrighting it in England, and see how
far the law would protect them against the voracious
little publisher, who thus far had not only snapped
up everything bearing Mark Twain’s signature,
but had included in a volume of Mark Twain sketches
certain examples of very weak humor with which Mark
Twain had been previously unfamiliar.

Whatever the English pirate’s opinion of the
copyright protection of ‘Roughing It’
may have been, he did not attempt to violate it.
This was gratifying. Clemens came to regard England
as a friendly power. He decided to visit it and
spy out the land. He would make the acquaintance
of its people and institutions and write a book, which
would do these things justice.

He gave out no word of his real purpose. He merely
said that he was going over to see his English publishers,
and perhaps to arrange for a few lectures. He
provided himself with some stylographic note-books,
by which he could produce two copies of his daily
memoranda—­one for himself and one to mail
to Mrs. Clemens—­and sailed on the Scotia
August 21, 1872.

Page 266

Arriving in Liverpool he took train for London, and
presently the wonderful charm of that old, finished
country broke upon him. His “first hour
in England was an hour of delight,” he records;
“of rapture and ecstasy. These are the
best words I can find, but they are not adequate;
they are not strong enough to convey the feeling which
this first vision of rural England brought me.”
Then he noticed that the gentleman opposite in his
compartment paid no attention to the scenery, but was
absorbed in a green-covered volume. He was so
absorbed in it that, by and by, Clemens’s curiosity
was aroused. He shifted his position a little
and his eye caught the title. It was the first
volume of the English edition of The Innocents Abroad.
This was gratifying for a moment; then he remembered
that the man had never laughed, never even smiled
during the hour of his steady reading. Clemens
recalled what he had heard of the English lack of
humor. He wondered if this was a fair example
of it, and if the man could be really taking seriously
every word he was reading. Clemens could not
look at the scenery any more for watching his fellow-passenger,
waiting with a fascinated interest for the paragraph
that would break up that iron-clad solemnity.
It did not come. During all the rest of the trip
to London the atmosphere of the compartment remained
heavy with gloom.

He drove to the Langham Hotel, always popular with
Americans, established himself, and went to look up
his publishers. He found the Routledges about
to sit down to luncheon in a private room, up-stairs,
in their publishing house. He joined them, and
not a soul stirred from that table again until evening.
The Routledges had never heard Mark Twain talk before,
never heard any one talk who in the least resembled
him. Various refreshments were served during
the afternoon, came and went, while this marvelous
creature talked on and they listened, reveling, and
wondering if America had any more of that sort at
home. By and by dinner was served; then after
a long time, when there was no further excuse for
keeping him there, they took him to the Savage Club,
where there were yet other refreshments and a gathering
of the clans to welcome this new arrival as a being
from some remote and unfamiliar star.

Tom Hood, the younger, was there, and Harry Lee, and
Stanley the explorer, who had but just returned from
finding Livingstone, and Henry Irving, and many another
whose name remains, though the owners of those names
are all dead now, and their laughter and their good-fellowship
are only a part of that intangible fabric which we
call the past.’—­[Clemens had first
known Stanley as a newspaper man. “I first
met him when he reported a lecture of mine in St.
Louis,” he said once in a conversation where
the name of Stanley was mentioned.]

LXXXVI

ENGLAND

From that night Mark Twain’s stay in England
could not properly be called a gloomy one.

Page 267

Routledge, Hood, Lee, and, in fact, all literary London,
set themselves the task of giving him a good time.
Whatever place of interest they could think of he
was taken there; whatever there was to see he saw it.
Dinners, receptions, and assemblies were not complete
without him. The White Friars’ Club and
others gave banquets in his honor. He was the
sensation of the day. When he rose to speak on
these occasions he was greeted with wild cheers.
Whatever he said they eagerly applauded—­too
eagerly sometimes, in the fear that they might be regarded
as insensible to American humor. Other speakers
delighted in chaffing him in order to provoke his
retorts. When a speaker humorously referred to
his American habit of carrying a cotton umbrella,
his reply that he followed this custom because a cotton
umbrella was the only kind of an umbrella that an
Englishman wouldn’t steal, was all over England
next day, and regarded as one of the finest examples
of wit since the days of Swift.

The suddenness and completeness of his acceptance
by the great ones of London rather overwhelmed and
frightened him made him timid. Joaquin Miller
writes:

He was shy as a girl, although
time was already coyly flirting white
flowers at his temples, and
could hardly be coaxed to meet the
learned and great who wanted
to take him by the hand.

Many came to call on him at his hotel, among them
Charles Reade and Canon Kingsley. Kingsley came
twice without finding him; then wrote, asking for
an appointment. Reade invited his assistance on
a novel. Indeed, it was in England that Mark
Twain was first made to feel that he had come into
his rightful heritage. Whatever may have been
the doubts concerning him in America, there was no
question in England. Howells says:

In England rank, fashion, and culture
rejoiced in him. Lord mayors, lord chief
justices, and magnates of many kinds were his hosts;
he was desired in country houses, and his bold
genius captivated the favor of periodicals which
spurned the rest of our nation.

After that first visit of Mark Twain’s, when
Americans in England, referring to their great statesmen,
authors, and the like, naturally mentioned the names
of Seward, Webster, Lowell, or Holmes, the English
comment was likely to be: “Never mind those.
We can turn out academic Sewards by the dozen, and
cultured humorists like Lowell and Holmes by the score.
Tell us of Lincoln, Artemus Ward, and Mark Twain.
We cannot match these; they interest us.”
And it was true. History could not match them,
for they were unique.

Clemens would have been more than human if in time
he had not realized the fuller meaning of this triumph,
and exulted in it a little to the folks at home.
There never lived a more modest, less pretentious,
less aggressive man than Mark Twain, but there never
lived a man who took a more childlike delight in genuine
appreciation; and, being childlike, it was only human
that he should wish those nearest to him to share his
happiness. After one memorable affair he wrote:

Page 268

I have been received in a sort of tremendous
way to-night by the brains of London, assembled
at the annual dinner of the sheriffs of London;
mine being (between you and me) a name which was received
with a thundering outburst of spontaneous applause
when the long list of guests was called.

I might have perished on the spot but for the friendly
support and assistance of my excellent friend, Sir
John Bennett.

This letter does not tell all of the incident or the
real reason why he might have perished on the spot.
During the long roll-call of guests he had lost interest
a little, and was conversing in whispers with his
“excellent friend,” Sir John Bennett, stopping
to applaud now and then when the applause of the others
indicated that some distinguished name had been pronounced.
All at once the applause broke out with great vehemence.
This must be some very distinguished person indeed.
He joined in it with great enthusiasm. When it
was over he whispered to Sir John:

“Whose name was that we were just applauding?”

“Mark Twain’s.”

Whereupon the support was needed.

Poor little pirate Hotten did not have a happy time
during this visit. He had reveled in the prospect
at first, for he anticipated a large increase to be
derived from his purloined property; but suddenly,
one morning, he was aghast to find in the Spectator
a signed letter from Mark Twain, in which he was repudiated,
referred to as “John Camden Hottentot,”
an unsavory person generally. Hotten also sent
a letter to the Spectator, in which he attempted to
justify himself, but it was a feeble performance.
Clemens prepared two other communications, each worse
than the other and both more destructive than the
first one. But these were only to relieve his
mind. He did not print them. In one of them
he pursued the fancy of John Camden Hottentot, whom
he offers as a specimen to the Zoological Gardens.

It is not a bird. It is not a man. It is
not a fish. It does not seem to be in all respects
a reptile. It has the body and features of a man,
but scarcely any of the instincts that belong to such
a structure.... I am sure that this singular
little creature is the missing link between the man
and the hyena.

Hotten had preyed upon explorer Stanley and libeled
him in a so-called. biography to a degree that had
really aroused some feeling against Stanley in England.
Only for the moment—­the Queen invited Stanley
to luncheon, and newspaper criticism ceased.
Hotten was in general disrepute, therefore, so it
was not worth while throwing a second brick at him.

In fact, now that Clemens had expended his venom,
on paper, Hotten seemed to him rather an amusing figure
than otherwise. An incident grew out of it all,
however, that was not amusing. E. P. Hingston,
whom the reader may remember as having been with Artemus
Ward in Virginia City, and one of that happy group
that wined and dined the year away, had been engaged
by Hotten to write the introductory to his edition
of The Innocents Abroad. It was a well-written,
highly complimentary appreciation. Hingston did
not dream that he was committing an offense, nor did
Clemens himself regard it as such in the beginning.

Page 269

But Mark Twain’s views had undergone a radical
change, and with characteristic dismissal of previous
conditions he had forgotten that he had ever had any
other views than those he now held. Hingston was
in London, and one evening, at a gathering, approached
Clemens with outstretched hand. But Clemens failed
to see Hingston’s hand or to recognize him.
In after-years his conscience hurt him terribly for
this. He remembered it only with remorse and
shame. Once, in his old age, he spoke of it with
deep sorrow.

LXXXVII

THE BOOK THAT WAS NEVER WRITTEN

The book on England, which he had prepared for so
carefully, was never written. Hundreds of the
stylographic pages were filled, and the duplicates
sent home for the entertainment of Olivia Clemens,
but the notes were not completed, and the actual writing
was never begun. There was too much sociability
in London for one thing, and then he found that he
could not write entertainingly of England without introducing
too many personalities, and running the risk of offending
those who had taken him into their hearts and homes.
In a word, he would have to write too seriously or
not at all.

He began his memoranda industriously enough, and the
volume might have been as charming and as valuable
as any he has left behind. The reader will hardly
fail to find a few of the entries interesting.
They are offered here as examples of his daily observation
during those early weeks of his stay, and to show
somewhat of his purpose:

Anexpatriate

There was once an American thief who
fled his country and took refuge in England.
He dressed himself after the fashion of the Londoners,
and taught his tongue the peculiarities of the London
pronunciation and did his best in all ways to pass
himself for a native. But he did two fatal
things: he stopped at the Langham Hotel,
and the first trip he took was to visit Stratford-on-Avon
and the grave of Shakespeare. These things
betrayed his nationality.

Stanleyandthequeen

See the power a monarch wields!
When I arrived here, two weeks ago, the papers
and geographers were in a fair way to eat poor Stanley
up without salt or sauce. The Queen says,
“Come four hundred miles up into Scotland
and sit at my luncheon-table fifteen minutes”;
which, being translated, means, “Gentlemen,
I believe in this man and take him under my protection”;
and not another yelp is heard.

AttheBritishmuseum

What a place it is!

Page 270

Mention some very rare curiosity of
a peculiar nature—­a something which
you have read about somewhere but never seen—­they
show you a dozen! They show you all the possible
varieties of that thing! They show you curiously
wrought jeweled necklaces of beaten gold, worn
by the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Etruscans, Greeks,
Britons—­every people of the forgotten
ages, indeed. They show you the ornaments
of all the tribes and peoples that live or ever did
live. Then they show you a cast taken from
Cromwell’s face in death; then the venerable
vase that once contained the ashes of Xerxes.

I am wonderfully thankful for the British
Museum. Nobody comes bothering around me—­nobody
elbows me—­all the room and all the light
I want, under this huge dome—­no disturbing
noises—­and people standing ready to
bring me a copy of pretty much any book that ever
was printed under the sun—­and if I choose
to go wandering about the long corridors and galleries
of the great building the secrets of all the earth
and all the ages axe laid open to me. I am not
capable of expressing my gratitude for the British
Museum—­it seems as if I do not know
any but little words and weak ones.

WestminsterAbbeybynight

It was past eleven o’clock and
I was just going to bed. But this friend
of mine was as reliable as he was eccentric, and so
there was not a doubt in my mind that his “expedition”
had merit in it. I put on my coat and boots
again, and we drove away.

“Where is it? Where
are we going?”

“Don’t worry.
You’ll see.”

He was not inclined to talk. So
I thought this must be a weighty matter.
My curiosity grew with the minutes, but I kept it manfully
under the surface. I watched the lamps, the
signs, the numbers as we thundered down the long
street. I am always lost in London, day or
night. It was very chilly, almost bleak.
People leaned against the gusty blasts as if it
were the dead of winter. The crowds grew thinner
and thinner, and the noises waxed faint and seemed
far away. The sky was overcast and threatening.
We drove on, and still on, till I wondered if
we were ever going to stop. At last we passed
by a spacious bridge and a vast building, and
presently entered a gateway, passed through a
sort of tunnel, and stopped in a court surrounded
by the black outlines of a great edifice. Then
we alighted, walked a dozen steps or so, and waited.
In a little while footsteps were heard, a man
emerged from the darkness, and we dropped into
his wake without saying anything. He led us under
an archway of masonry, and from that into a roomy
tunnel, through a tall iron gate, which he locked
behind us. We followed him down this tunnel,
guided more by his footsteps on the stone flagging
than by anything we could very distinctly see.
At the end of it we came to another iron gate,
and our conductor stopped there and lit a bull’s-eye

Page 271

lantern. Then he unlocked the gate; and I wished
he had oiled it first, it grated so dismally.
The gate swung open and we stood on the threshold
of what seemed a limitless domed and pillared cavern,
carved out of the solid darkness. The conductor
and my friend took off their hats reverently,
and I did likewise. For the moment that we
stood thus there was not a sound, and the stillness
seemed to add to the solemnity of the gloom.
I looked my inquiry!

“It is the tomb of the
great dead of England-Westminster Abbey."...

We were among the tombs; on every hand
dull shapes of men, sitting, standing, or stooping,
inspected us curiously out of the darkness —­reached
out their hands toward us—­some appealing,
some beckoning, some warning us away. Effigies
they were—­statues over the graves; but
they looked human and natural in the murky shadows.
Now a little half-grown black and white cat squeezed
herself through the bars of the iron gate and
came purring lovingly about us, unawed by the
time or the place, unimpressed by the marble pomp that
sepulchers a line of mighty dead that ends with
a great author of yesterday and began with a sceptered
monarch away back in the dawn of history, more
than twelve hundred years ago . . . .

Mr. Wright flashed his lantern first
upon this object and then upon that, and kept
up a running commentary that showed there was nothing
about the venerable Abbey that was trivial in his
eyes or void of interest. He is a man in
authority, being superintendent, and his daily
business keeps him familiar with every nook and corner
of the great pile. Casting a luminous ray
now here, now yonder, he would say:

“Observe the height of the Abbey—­one
hundred and three feet to the base of the roof;
I measured it myself the other day. Notice the
base of this column—­old, very old—­hundreds
and hundreds of years —­and how well
they knew how to build in those old days! Notice
it —­every stone is laid horizontally;
that is to say, just as nature laid it originally
in the quarry not set up edgewise; in our day some
people set them on edge, and then wonder why they split
and flake. Architects cannot teach nature
anything. Let me remove this matting—­it
is put here to preserve the pavement; now there is
a bit of pavement that is seven hundred years
old; you can see by these scattering clusters
of colored mosaics how beautiful it was before time
and sacrilegious idlers marred it. Now there,
in the border, was an inscription, once see, follow
the circle-you can trace it by the ornaments that
have been pulled out—­here is an A and there
is an O, and yonder another A—­all beautiful
Old English capitals; there is no telling what
the inscription was—­no record left now.
Now move along in this direction, if you please.
Yonder is where old King Sebert the Saxon lies
his monument is the oldest one in the Abbey; Sebert
died in 616,—­[Clemens probably misunderstood

Page 272

the name. It was Ethelbert who died in 616.
The name Sebert does not appear in any Saxon annals
accessible to the author.]—­and that’s
as much, as twelve hundred and fifty years ago
think of it! Twelve hundred and fifty years!
Now yonder is the last one—­Charles Dickens—­there
on the floor, with the brass letters on the slab—­and
to this day the people come and put flowers on
it.... There is Garrick’s monument;
and Addison’s, and Thackeray’s bust—­and
Macaulay lies there. And close to Dickens
and Garrick lie Sheridan and Dr. Johnson—­and
here is old Parr....

“That stone there covers Campbell
the poet. Here are names you know pretty
well—­Milton, and Gray who wrote the Elegy,
and Butler who wrote Hudibras; and Edmund Spenser,
and Ben Jonson—­there are three tablets
to him scattered about the Abbey, and all got ’O,
Rare Ben Jonson’ cut on them. You were
standing on one of them just now he is buried
standing up. There used to be a tradition here
that explains it. The story goes that he
did not dare ask to be buried in the Abbey, so
he asked King James if he would make him a present
of eighteen inches of English ground, and the King
said ‘yes,’ and asked him where he
would have it, and he said in Westminster Abbey.
Well, the King wouldn’t go back on his word,
and so there he is, sure enough-stood up on end.”

The reader may regret that there are not more of these
entries, and that the book itself was never written.
Just when he gave up the project is not recorded.
He was urged to lecture in London, but declined.
To Mrs. Clemens, in September, he wrote:

Everybody says lecture, lecture, lecture, but I have
not the least idea of doing it; certainly not at present.
Mr. Dolby, who took Dickens to America, is coming
to talk business tomorrow, though I have sent him word
once before that I can’t be hired to talk here;
because I have no time to spare. There is too
much sociability; I do not get along fast enough with
work.

In October he declared that he was very homesick,
and proposed that Mrs. Clemens and Susie join him
at once in London, unless she would prefer to have
him come home for the winter and all of them return
to London in the spring. So it is likely that
the book was not then abandoned. He felt that
his visit was by no means ended; that it was, in fact,
only just begun, but he wanted the ones he loved most
to share it with him. To his mother and sister,
in November, he wrote:

I came here to take notes for a book, but I haven’t
done much but attend dinners and make speeches.
I have had a jolly good time, and I do hate to go
away from these English folks; they make a stranger
feel entirely at home, and they laugh so easily that
it is a comfort to make after-dinner speeches here.
I have made hundreds of friends; and last night, in
the crush at the opening of the new Guild Hall Library
and Museum, I was surprised to meet a familiar face
every other step.

Page 273

All his impressions of England had been happy ones.
He could deliver a gentle satire now and then at certain
British institutions—­certain London localities
and features—­as in his speech at the Savage
Club, —­[September 28, 1872. This is
probably the most characteristic speech made by Mark
Twain during his first London visit; the reader will
find it in full in Appendix L, at the end of last
volume.]—­but taking the snug island as
a whole, its people, its institutions, its fair, rural
aspects, he had found in it only delight. To
Mrs. Crane he wrote:

If you and Theodore will come over in
the spring with Livy and me, and spend the summer,
you shall see a country that is so beautiful that
you will be obliged to believe in fairy-land.
There is nothing like it elsewhere on the globe.
You should have a season ticket and travel up
and down every day between London and Oxford and worship
nature.

And Theodore can browse with me among
dusty old dens that look now as they looked five
hundred years ago; and puzzle over books in the British
Museum that were made before Christ was born; and in
the customs of their public dinners, and the ceremonies
of every official act, and the dresses of a thousand
dignitaries, trace the speech and manners of all
the centuries that have dragged their lagging
decades over England since the Heptarchy fell asunder.
I would a good deal rather live here if I could
get the rest of you over.

He sailed November 12th, on the Batavia, loaded with
Christmas presents for everybody; jewelry, furs, laces;
also a practical steam-engine for his namesake, Sam
Moffett. Half-way across the Atlantic the Batavia
ran into a hurricane and was badly damaged by heavy
seas, and driven far out of her course. It was
a lucky event on the whole, for she fell in with a
water-logged lumber bark, a complete wreck, with nine
surviving sailors clinging to her rigging. In
the midst of the wild gale a lifeboat was launched
and the perishing men were rescued. Clemens prepared
a graphic report of the matter for the Royal Humane
Society, asking that medals be conferred upon the
brave rescuers, a document that was signed by his
fellow-passengers and obtained for the men complete
recognition and wide celebrity. Closing, the
writer said:

As might have been anticipated, if I
have been of any service toward rescuing these
nine shipwrecked human beings by standing around the
deck in a furious storm, without an umbrella, keeping
an eye on things and seeing that they were done
right, and yelling whenever a cheer seemed to
be the important thing, I am glad and I am satisfied.
I ask no reward. I would do it again under the
same circumstances. But what I do plead for,
earnestly and sincerely, is that the Royal Humane
Society will remember our captain and our life-boat
crew, and in so remembering them increase the high
honor and esteem in which the society is held
all over the civilized world.

The Batavia reached New York November 26, 1872.
Mark Twain had been absent three months, during which
he had been brought to at least a partial realization
of what his work meant to him and to mankind.

Page 274

An election had taken place during his absence—­an
election which gratified him deeply, for it had resulted
in the second presidency of General Grant and in the
defeat of Horace Greeley, whom he admired perhaps,
but not as presidential material. To Thomas Nast,
who had aided very effectually in Mr. Greeley’s
overwhelming defeat, Clemens wrote:

Nast, you more than any other man have won a prodigious
victory for Grant—­I mean, rather, for civilization
and progress. Those pictures were simply marvelous,
and if any man in the land has a right to hold his
head up and be honestly proud of his share in this
year’s vast events that man is unquestionably
yourself. We all do sincerely honor you, and
are proud of you.

Horace Greeley’s peculiar abilities and eccentricities
won celebrity for him, rather than voters. Mark
Twain once said of him:

“He was a great man, an honest man, and served
his, country well and was an honor to it. Also,
he was a good-natured man, but abrupt with strangers
if they annoyed him when he was busy. He was profane,
but that is nothing; the best of us is that.
I did not know him well, but only just casually, and
by accident. I never met him but once. I
called on him in the Tribune office, but I was not
intending to. I was looking for Whitelaw Reid,
and got into the wrong den. He was alone at his
desk, writing, and we conversed—­not long,
but just a little. I asked him if he was well,
and he said, ‘What the hell do you want?’
Well, I couldn’t remember what I wanted, so
I said I would call again. But I didn’t.”

Clemens did not always tell the incident just in this
way. Sometimes it was John Hay he was looking
for instead of Reid, and the conversation with Greeley
varied; but perhaps there was a germ of history under
it somewhere, and at any rate it could have happened
well enough, and not have been out of character with
either of the men.

LXXXVIII

“Thegildedage”

Mark Twain did not go on the lecture circuit that
winter. Redpath had besought him as usual, and
even in midsummer had written:

“Will you? Won’t you? We have
seven thousand to eight thousand dollars in engagements
recorded for you,” and he named a list of towns
ranging geographically from Boston to St. Paul.

But Clemens had no intention then of ever lecturing
any more, and again in November, from London, he announced
(to Redpath):

“When I yell again for less than $500 I’ll
be pretty hungry, but I haven’t any intention
of yelling at any price.”

Page 275

Redpath pursued him, and in January proposed $400
for a single night in Philadelphia, but without result.
He did lecture two nights in Steinway Hall for the
Mercantile Library Association, on the basis of half
profits, netting $1,300 for the two nights as his share;
and he lectured one night in Hartford, at a profit
Of $1,500, for charity. Father Hawley, of Hartford,
had announced that his missionary work was suffering
for lack of funds. Some of his people were actually
without food, he said, their children crying with
hunger. No one ever responded to an appeal like
that quicker than Samuel Clemens. He offered to
deliver a lecture free, and to bear an equal proportion
of whatever expenses were incurred by the committee
of eight who agreed to join in forwarding the project.
He gave the Sandwich Island lecture, and at the close
of it a large card was handed him with the figures
of the receipts printed upon it. It was held
up to view, and the house broke into a storm of cheers.

He did very little writing during the early weeks
following his return. Early in the year (January
3 and 6, 1873) he contributed two Sandwich Island
letters to the Tribune, in which, in his own peculiar
fashion, he urged annexation.

“We must annex those people,” he declared,
and proceeded to specify the blessings we could give
them, such as “leather-headed juries, the insanity
law, and the Tweed Ring.”

We can confer Woodhull and
Clafin on them, and George Francis Train.
We can give them lecturers!
I will go myself.

We can make that little bunch
of sleepy islands the hottest corner
on earth, and array it in
the moral splendor of our high and holy
civilization. Annexation
is what the poor islanders need!

“Shall we, to men benighted,
the lamp of life deny?”

His success in England became an incentive to certain
American institutions to recognize his gifts at home.
Early in the year he was dined as the guest of the
Lotos Club of New York, and a week or two later elected
to its membership. This was but a beginning.
Some new membership or honor was offered every little
while, and so many banquets that he finally invented
a set form for declining them. He was not yet
recognized as the foremost American man of letters,
but undoubtedly he had become the most popular; and
Edwin Whipple, writing at this time, or but little
later, said:

“Mark Twain is regarded chiefly as a humorist,
but the exercise of his real talents would rank him
with the ablest of our authors in the past fifty years.”
So he was beginning to be “discovered”
in high places.

It was during this winter that the Clemens household
enjoyed its first real home life in Hartford, its
first real home life anywhere since those earliest
days of marriage. The Hooker mansion was a comfortable
place. The little family had comparatively good
health. Their old friends were stanch and lavishly
warm-hearted, and they had added many new ones.
Their fireside was a delightful nucleus around which
gathered those they cared for most, the Twichells,
the Warner families, the Trumbulls—­all certain
of a welcome there. George Warner, only a little
while ago, remembering, said:

Page 276

“The Clemens house was the only one I have ever
known where there was never any preoccupation in the
evenings, and where visitors were always welcome.
Clemens was the best kind of a host; his evenings after
dinner were an unending flow of stories.”

Friends living near by usually came and went at will,
often without the ceremony of knocking or formal leave-taking.
They were more like one great family in that neighborhood,
with a community of interests, a unity of ideals.
The Warner families and the Clemenses were particularly
intimate, and out of their association grew Mark Twain’s
next important literary undertaking, his collaboration
with Charles Dudley Warner in ‘The Gilded Age’.

A number of more or less absurd stories have been
printed about the origin of this book. It was
a very simple matter, a perfectly natural development.

At the dinner-table one night, with the Warners present,
criticisms of recent novels were offered, with the
usual freedom and severity of dinner-table talk.
The husbands were inclined to treat rather lightly
the novels in which their wives were finding entertainment.
The wives naturally retorted that the proper thing
for the husbands to do was to furnish the American
people with better ones. This was regarded in
the nature of a challenge, and as such was accepted—­mutually
accepted: that is to say, in partnership.
On the spur of the moment Clemens and Warner agreed
that they would do a novel together, that they would
begin it immediately. This is the whole story
of the book’s origin; so far, at least, as the
collaboration is concerned. Clemens, in fact,
had the beginning of a story in his mind, but had
been unwilling to undertake an extended work of fiction
alone. He welcomed only too eagerly, therefore,
the proposition of joint authorship. His purpose
was to write a tale around that lovable character
of his youth, his mother’s cousin, James Lampton—­to
let that gentle visionary stand as the central figure
against a proper background. The idea appealed
to Warner, and there was no delay in the beginning.
Clemens immediately set to work and completed 399
pages of the manuscript, the first eleven chapters
of the book, before the early flush of enthusiasm
waned.

Warner came over then, and Clemens read it aloud to
him. Warner had some plans for the story, and
took it up at this point, and continued it through
the next twelve chapters; and so they worked alternately,
“in the superstition,” as Mark Twain long
afterward declared, “that we were writing one
coherent yarn, when I suppose, as a matter of fact,
we were writing two incoherent ones.”—­[The
reader may be interested in the division of labor.
Clemens wrote chapters I to XI; also chapters XXIV,
XXV, xxvii, XXVIII, xxx, XXXII, xxxiii,
XXXIV, XXXVI, XXXVII, XLII, xliii, XLV, li,
lii, LIII, lvii, lix, lx, LXI,
LXII, and portions of chapters xxxv, xlix,
LVI. Warner wrote chapters XII to XXIII; also
chapters xxvi, XXIX, XXXI, xxxviii, XXXIX,
XL, xli, xliv, XLVI, xlvii, XLVIII,
L, liv, lv, lviii, lxiii, and portions
of chapters xxxv, xlix, and LVI. The
work was therefore very evenly divided.

Page 277

There was another co-worker on The Gilded Age before
the book was finally completed. This was J. Hammond
Trumbull, who prepared the variegated, marvelous cryptographic
chapter headings: Trumbull was the most learned
man that ever lived in Hartford. He was familiar
with all literary and scientific data, and according
to Clemens could swear in twenty-seven languages.
It was thought to be a choice idea to get Trumbull
to supply a lingual medley of quotations to precede
the chapters in the new book, the purpose being to
excite interest and possibly to amuse the reader—­a
purpose which to some extent appears to have miscarried.]

The book was begun in February and finished in April,
so the work did not lag. The result, if not highly
artistic, made astonishingly good reading. Warner
had the touch of romance, Clemens, the gift of creating,
or at least of portraying, human realities. Most
of his characters reflected intimate personalities
of his early life. Besides the apotheosis of
James Lampton into the immortal Sellers, Orion became
Washington Hawkins, Squire Clemens the judge, while
Mark Twain’s own personality, in a greater or
lesser degree, is reflected in most of his creations.
As for the Tennessee land, so long a will-o’the-wisp
and a bugbear, it became tangible property at last.
Only a year or two before Clemens had written to Orion:

Oh, here! I don’t want to
be consulted at all about Tennessee. I don’t
want it even mentioned to me. When I make a suggestion
it is for you to act upon it or throw it aside,
but I beseech you never to ask my advice, opinion,
or consent about that hated property.

But it came in good play now. It is the important
theme of the story.

Mark Twain was well qualified to construct his share
of the tale. He knew his characters, their lives,
and their atmospheres perfectly. Senator Dilworthy
(otherwise Senator Pomeroy, of Kansas, then notorious
for attempted vote-buying) was familiar enough.
That winter in Washington had acquainted Clemens with
the life there, its political intrigues, and the disrepute
of Congress. Warner was equally well qualified
for his share of the undertaking, and the chief criticism
that one may offer is the one stated by Clemens himself—­that
the divisions of the tale remain divisions rather
than unity.

As for the story itself—­the romance and
tragedy of it—­the character of Laura in
the hands of either author is one not easy to forget.
Whether this means that the work is well done, or
only strikingly done, the reader himself must judge.
Morally, the character is not justified. Laura
was a victim of circumstance from the beginning.
There could be no poetic justice in her doom.
To drag her out of a steamer wreck, only to make her
the victim of a scoundrel, later an adventuress, and
finally a murderess, all may be good art, but of a
very bad kind. Laura is a sort of American Becky
Sharp; but there is retributive justice in Becky’s
fate, whereas Laura’s doom is warranted only
by the author’s whim. As for her end, whatever
the virtuous public of that day might have done, a
present-day audience would not have pelted her from
the stage, destroyed her future, taken away her life.

Page 278

The authors regarded their work highly when it was
finished, but that is nothing. Any author regards
his work highly at the moment of its completion.
In later years neither of them thought very well of
their production; but that also is nothing. The
author seldom cares very deeply for his offspring
once it is turned over to the public charge. The
fact that the story is still popular, still delights
thousands of readers, when a myriad of novels that
have been written since it was completed have lived
their little day and died so utterly that even their
names have passed out of memory, is the best verdict
as to its worth.

LXXXIX

PLANNING A NEW HOME

Clemens and his wife bought a lot for the new home
that winter, a fine, sightly piece of land on Farmington
Avenue—­table-land, sloping down to a pretty
stream that wound through the willows and among the
trees. They were as delighted as children with
their new purchase and the prospect of building.
To her sister Mrs. Clemens wrote:

Mr. Clemens seems to glory
in his sense of possession; he goes daily
into the lot, has had several
falls trying to lay off the land by
sliding around on his feet....

For three days the ice has covered the
trees, and they have been glorious. We could
do nothing but watch the beauty outside; if you looked
at the trees as the sun struck them, with your back
toward the sun, they were covered with jewels.
If you looked toward the sun it was all crystal
whiteness, a perfect fairy-land. Then the nights
were moonlight, and that was a great beauty, the moon
giving us the same prismatic effect.

This was the storm of which Mark Twain wrote his matchless
description, given first in his speech on New England
weather, and later preserved in ‘Following the
Equator’, in more extended form. In that
book he likens an ice-storm to his impressions derived
from reading descriptions of the Taj Mahal, that wonderful
tomb of a fair East Indian queen. It is a marvelous
bit of word-painting—­his description of
that majestic vision: “When every bough
and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dewdrops,
and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the
Shah of Persia’s diamond plume.”
It will pay any one to look up that description and
read it all, though it has been said, by the fortunate
one or two who heard him first give it utterance as
an impromptu outburst, that in the subsequent process
of writing the bloom of its original magnificence was
lost.

The plans for the new house were drawn forthwith by
that gentle architect Edward Potter, whose art to-day
may be considered open to criticism, but not because
of any lack of originality. Hartford houses of
that period were mainly of the goods-box form of architecture,
perfectly square, typifying the commercial pursuits
of many of their owners. Potter agreed to get
away from this idea, and a radical and even frenzied

Page 279

departure was the result. Certainly his plans
presented beautiful pictures, and all who saw them
were filled with wonder and delight. Architecture
has lavished itself in many florescent forms since
then, but we may imagine that Potter’s “English
violet” order of design, as he himself designated
it, startled, dazzled, and captivated in a day, when
most houses were mere habitations, built with a view
to economy and the largest possible amount of room.

Workmen were put on the ground without delay, to prepare
for the builders, and work was rapidly pushed along.
Then in May the whole matter was left in the hands
of the architect and the carpenters (with Lawyer Charles
E. Perkins to stand between Potter and the violent
builder, who roared at Potter and frightened him when
he wanted changes), while the Clemens household, with
Clara Spaulding, a girlhood friend of Mrs. Clemens,
sailed away to England for a half-year holiday.

XC

A LONG ENGLISH HOLIDAY

They sailed on the Batavia, and with them went a young
man named Thompson, a theological student whom Clemens
had consented to take as an amanuensis. There
is a pathetic incident connected with this young man,
and it may as well be set down here. Clemens found,
a few weeks after his arrival in England, that so
great was the tax upon his time that he could make
no use of Thompson’s services. He gave Thompson
fifty dollars, and upon the possibility of the young
man’s desiring to return to America, advanced
him another fifty dollars, saying that he could return
it some day, and never thought of it again. But
the young man remembered it, and one day, thirty-six
years later, after a life of hardship and struggle,
such as the life of a country minister is apt to be,
he wrote and inclosed a money-order, a payment on his
debt. That letter and its inclosure brought only
sorrow to Mark Twain. He felt that it laid upon
him the accumulated burden of the weary thirty-six
years’ struggle with ill-fortune. He returned
the money, of course, and in a biographical note commented:

How pale painted heroisms of romance
look beside it! Thompson’s heroism,
which is real, which is colossal, which is sublime,
and which is costly beyond all estimate, is achieved
in profound obscurity, and its hero walks in rags
to the end of his days. I had forgotten Thompson
completely, but he flashes before me as vividly as
lightning. I can see him now. It was on the
deck of the Batavia, in the dock. The ship
was casting off, with that hubbub and confusion
and rushing of sailors, and shouting of orders and
shrieking of boatswain whistles, which marked the
departure preparations in those days—­an
impressive contrast with the solemn silence which
marks the departure preparations of the giant ships
of the present day. Mrs. Clemens, Clara Spaulding,
little Susy, and the nurse-maid were all properly
garbed for the occasion. We all had on our

Page 280

storm-rig, heavy clothes of somber hue, but new and
designed and constructed for the purpose, strictly
in accordance with sea-going etiquette; anything
wearable on land being distinctly and odiously
out of the question.

Very well. On that deck, and gliding
placidly among those honorable and properly upholstered
groups, appeared Thompson, young, grave, long,
slim, with an aged fuzzy plug hat towering high on
the upper end of him and followed by a gray duster,
which flowed down, without break or wrinkle, to
his ankles. He came straight to us, and shook
hands and compromised us. Everybody could
see that we knew him. A nigger in heaven
could not have created a profounder astonishment.

However, Thompson didn’t know
that anything was happening. He had no prejudices
about clothes. I can still see him as he looked
when we passed Sandy Hook and the winds of the
big ocean smote us. Erect, lofty, and grand
he stood facing the blast, holding his plug on
with both hands and his generous duster blowing out
behind, level with his neck. There were scoffers
observing, but he didn’t know it; he wasn’t
disturbed.

In my mind, I see him once afterward,
clothed as before, taking me down in shorthand.
The Shah of Persia had come to England and Dr. Hosmer,
of the Herald, had sent me to Ostend, to view his Majesty’s
progress across the Channel and write an account
of it. I can’t recall Thompson after
that, and I wish his memory had been as poor as
mine.

They had been a month in London, when the final incident
referred to took place—­the arrival of the
Shah of Persia—­and were comfortably quartered
at the Langham Hotel. To Twichell Clemens wrote:

We have a luxuriously ample suite of
apartments on the third floor, our bedroom looking
straight up Portland Place, our parlor having a noble
array of great windows looking out upon both streets
(Portland Place and the crook that joins it onto
Regent Street).

Nine p.m. full twilight, rich
sunset tints lingering in the west.

I am not going to write anything;
rather tell it when I get back.
I love you and Harmony, and
that is all the fresh news I’ve got
anyway. And I mean to
keep that fresh all the time.

Mrs. Clemens, in a letter to her sister, declared:
“It is perfectly discouraging to try to write
you. There is so much to write about that it
makes me feel as if it was no use to begin.”

It was a period of continuous honor and entertainment.
If Mark Twain had been a lion on his first visit,
he was little less than royalty now. His rooms
at the Langham were like a court. Miss Spaulding
(now Mrs. John B. Stanchfield) remembers that Robert
Browning, Turgenieff, Sir John Millais, Lord Houghton,
and Sir Charles Dilke (then at the height of his fame)
were among those that called to pay their respects.
In a recent letter she says:

Page 281

I remember a delightful luncheon that
Charles Kingsley gave for Mr. Clemens; also an
evening when Lord Dunraven brought Mr. Home, the medium,
Lord Dunraven telling many of the remarkable things
he had seen Mr. Home do. I remember I wanted
so much to see him float out of a seven or eight
story window, and enter another, which Lord Dunraven
said he had seen him do many times. But Mr. Home
had been very ill, and said his power had left
him. My great regret was that we did not
see Carlyle, who was too sad and ill for visits.

Among others they met Lewis Carroll, the author of
Alice in Wonderland, and found him so shy that it
was almost impossible to get him to say a word on
any subject.

“The shyest full-grown man, except Uncle Remus,
I ever met,” Clemens once wrote. “Dr.
MacDonald and several other lively talkers were present,
and the talk went briskly on for a couple of hours,
but Carroll sat still all the while, except now and
then when he answered a question.”

At a dinner given by George Smalley they met Herbert
Spencer, and at a luncheon-party at Lord Houghton’s,
Sir Arthur Helps, then a world-wide celebrity.

Lord Elcho, a large, vigorous man, sat
at some distance down the table. He was talking
earnestly about the town of Godalming. It was
a deep, flowing, and inarticulate rumble, but I caught
the Godalming pretty nearly every time it broke
free of the rumbling, and as all the strength
was on the first end of the word, it startled
me every time, because it sounded so like swearing.
In the middle of the luncheon Lady Houghton rose,
remarked to the guests on her right and on her
left, in a matter-of-fact way, “Excuse me, I
have an engagement,” and without further
ceremony, she went off to meet it. This would
have been doubtful etiquette in America. Lord
Houghton told a number of delightful stories.
He told them in French, and I lost nothing of
them but the nubs.

Little Susy and her father thrived on London life,
but after a time it wore on Mrs. Clemens. She
delighted in the English cordiality and culture, but
the demands were heavy, the social forms sometimes
trying. Life in London was interesting, and in
its way charming, but she did not enter into it with
quite her husband’s enthusiasm and heartiness.
In the end they canceled all London engagements and
quietly set out for Scotland. On the way they
rested a few days in York, a venerable place such
as Mark Twain always loved to describe. In a letter
to Mrs. Langdon he wrote:

For the present we shall remain in this
queer old walled town, with its crooked, narrow
lanes, that tell us of their old day that knew no
wheeled vehicles; its plaster-and-timber dwellings,
with upper stories far overhanging the street,
and thus marking their date, say three hundred
years ago; the stately city walls, the castellated
gates, the ivy-grown, foliage-sheltered, most noble
and picturesque ruin of St. Mary’s Abbey,

Page 282

suggesting their date, say five hundred years
ago, in the heart of Crusading times and the glory
of English chivalry and romance; the vast Cathedral
of York, with its worn carvings and quaintly pictured
windows, preaching of still remoter days; the
outlandish names of streets and courts and byways that
stand as a record and a memorial, all these centuries,
of Danish dominion here in still earlier times;
the hint here and there of King Arthur and his
knights and their bloody fights with Saxon oppressors
round about this old city more than thirteen hundred
years gone by; and, last of all, the melancholy
old stone coffins and sculptured inscriptions,
a venerable arch and a hoary tower of stone that
still remain and are kissed by the sun and caressed
by the shadows every day, just as the sun and
the shadows have kissed and, caressed them every
lagging day since the Roman Emperor’s soldiers
placed them here in the times when Jesus the Son of
Mary walked the streets of Nazareth a youth, with
no more name or fame than the Yorkshire boy who
is loitering down this street this moment.

They reached Edinburgh at the end of July and secluded
themselves in Veitch’s family hotel in George
Street, intending to see no one. But this plan
was not a success; the social stress of London had
been too much for Mrs. Clemens, and she collapsed
immediately after their arrival. Clemens was
unacquainted in Edinburgh, but remembered that Dr.
John Brown, who had written Rab and His Friend, lived
there. He learned his address, and that he was
still a practising physician. He walked around
to 23 Rutland Street, and made himself known.
Dr. Brown came forthwith, and Mrs. Clemens speedily
recovered under his able and inspiring treatment.

The association did not end there. For nearly
a month Dr. Brown was their daily companion, either
at the hotel, or in his own home, or on protracted
drives when he made his round of visits, taking these
new friends along. Dr. John was beloved by everybody
in Edinburgh, everybody in Scotland, for that matter,
and his story of Rab had won him a following throughout
Christendom. He was an unpretentious sovereign.
Clemens once wrote of him:

His was a sweet and winning face, as
beautiful a face as I have ever known. Reposeful,
gentle, benignant; the face of a saint at peace with
all the world and placidly beaming upon it the sunshine
of love that filled his heart.

He was the friend of all dogs, and of all people.
It has been told of him that once, when driving, he
thrust his head suddenly out of the carriage window,
then resumed his place with a disappointed look.

“Who was it?” asked his companion.
“Some one you know?”

“No,” he said. “A dog I don’t
know.”

He became the boon companion and playmate of little
Susy, then not quite a year and a half old. He
called her Megalopis, a Greek term, suggested by her
eyes; those deep, burning eyes that seemed always so
full of life’s sadder philosophies, and impending
tragedy. In a collection of Dr. Brown’s
letters he refers to this period. In one place
he says:

Page 283

Had the author of The Innocents Abroad
not come to Edinburgh at that time we in all human
probability might never have met, and what a deprivation
that would have been to me during the last quarter
of a century!

And in another place:

I am attending the wife of
Mark Twain. His real name is Clemens.
She is a quite lovely little
woman, modest and clever, and she has a
girlie eighteen months old,
her ludicrous miniature—­and such eyes!

Those playmates, the good doctor and Megalopis, romped
together through the hotel rooms with that complete
abandon which few grown persons can assume in their
play with children, and not all children can assume
in their play with grown-ups. They played “bear,”
and the “bear” (which was a very little
one, so little that when it stood up behind the sofa
you could just get a glimpse of yellow hair) would
lie in wait for her victim, and spring out and surprise
him and throw him into frenzies of fear.

Almost every day they made his professional rounds
with him. He always carried a basket of grapes
for his patients. His guests brought along books
to read while they waited. When he stopped for
a call he would say:

“Entertain yourselves while I go in and reduce
the population.”

There was much sight-seeing to do in Edinburgh, and
they could not quite escape social affairs. There
were teas and luncheons and dinners with the Dunfermlines
and the Abercrombies, and the MacDonalds, and with
others of those brave clans that no longer slew one
another among the grim northern crags and glens, but
were as sociable and entertaining lords and ladies
as ever the southland could produce. They were
very gentle folk indeed, and Mrs. Clemens, in future
years, found her heart going back oftener to Edinburgh
than to any other haven of those first wanderings.
August 24th she wrote to her sister:

We leave Edinburgh to-morrow with sincere
regret; we have had such a delightful stay here—­we
do so regret leaving Dr. Brown and his sister,
thinking that we shall probably never see them again
[as indeed they never did].

They spent a day or two at Glasgow and sailed for
Ireland, where they put in a fortnight, and early
in September were back in England again, at Chester,
that queer old city where; from a tower on the wall,
Charles I. read the story of his doom. Reginald
Cholmondeley had invited them to visit his country
seat, beautiful Condover Hall, near Shrewsbury, and
in that lovely retreat they spent some happy, restful
days. Then they were in the whirl of London once
more, but escaped for a fortnight to Paris, sight-seeing
and making purchases for the new home.

Mrs. Clemens was quite ready to return to America,
by this time.

Page 284

I am blue and cross and homesick [she
wrote]. I suppose what makes me feel the
latter is because we are contemplating to stay in London
another month. There has not one sheet of
Mr. Clemens’s proof come yet, and if he
goes home before the book is published here he will
lose his copyright. And then his friends feel
that it will be better for him to lecture in London
before his book is published, not only that it
will give him a larger but a more enviable reputation.
I would not hesitate one moment if it were simply for
the money that his copyright will bring him, but
if his reputation will be better for his staying
and lecturing, of course he ought to stay....
The truth is, I can’t bear the thought of postponing
going home.

It is rather gratifying to find Olivia Clemens human,
like that, now and then. Otherwise, on general
testimony, one might well be tempted to regard her
as altogether of another race and kind.

XCI

A LONDON LECTURE

Clemens concluded to hasten the homeward journey,
but to lecture a few nights in London before starting.
He would then accompany his little family home, and
return at once to continue the lecture series and
protect his copyright. This plan was carried out.
In a communication to the Standard, October 7th, he
said:

Sir,—­In view of the
prevailing frenzy concerning the Sandwich Islands,
and the inflamed desire of the public to acquire information
concerning them, I have thought it well to tarry yet
another week in England and deliver a lecture upon
this absorbing subject. And lest it should
be thought unbecoming in me, a stranger, to come
to the public rescue at such a time, instead of leaving
to abler hands a matter of so much moment, I desire
to explain that I do it with the best motives
and the most honorable intentions. I do it
because I am convinced that no one can allay this
unwholesome excitement as effectually as I can, and
to allay it, and allay it as quickly as possible,
is surely one thing that is absolutely necessary
at this juncture. I feel and know that I am equal
to this task, for I can allay any kind of an excitement
by lecturing upon it. I have saved many communities
in this way. I have always been able to paralyze
the public interest in any topic that I chose
to take hold of and elucidate with all my strength.

Hoping that this explanation will show
that if I am seeming to
intrude I am at least doing it from a high impulse,
I am, sir, your
obedient servant,

At Eight o’Clock,andSaturdayafternoon, October
18th,
At Three o’Clock.

Subject:
“Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich
Islands.”

As Mr. Twain has spent several
months in these Islands, and is well
acquainted with his subject, the Lecture may be
expected to furnish
matter of interest.

Stalls, 5s.
Unreservedseats, 3s.

The prospect of a lecture from Mark Twain interested
the London public. Those who had not seen him
were willing to pay even for that privilege.
The papers were encouraging; Punch sounded a characteristic
note:

Welcometo
A lecturer

“’Tis time we Twain did
show ourselves.” ’Twas said
By Caesar, when one Mark had lost his head:
By Mark, whose head’s quite bright, ’tis
said again:
Therefore, “go with me, friends, to bless
this Twain.”

—­Punch.

Dolby had managed the Dickens lectures, and he proved
his sound business judgment and experience by taking
the largest available hall in London for Mark Twain.

On the evening of October 13th, in the spacious Queen’s
Concert Rooms, Hanover Square, Mark Twain delivered
his first public address in England. The subject
was “Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands,”
the old lecture with which he had made his first great
successes. He was not introduced. He appeared
on the platform in evening dress, assuming the character
of a manager announcing a disappointment.

Mr. Clemens, he said, had fully expected to be present.
He paused and loud murmurs arose from the audience.
He lifted his hand and they subsided. Then he
added, “I am happy to say that Mark Twain is
present, and will now give his lecture.”
Whereupon the audience roared its approval.

It would be hardly an exaggeration to say that his
triumph that week was a regal one. For five successive
nights and a Saturday matinee the culture and fashion
of London thronged to hear him discourse of their
“fellow savages.” It was a lecture
event wholly without precedent. The lectures
of Artemus Ward,—­["Artemus the delicious,”
as Charles Reade called him, came to London in June,
1866, and gave his “piece” in Egyptian
Hall. The refined, delicate, intellectual countenance,
the sweet, gave, mouth, from which one might have
expected philosophical lectures retained their seriousness
while listeners were convulsed with laughter.
There was something magical about it. Every sentence

Page 286

was a surprise. He played on his audience as
Liszt did on a piano most easily when most effectively.
Who can ever forget his attempt to stop his Italian
pianist—­“a count in his own country,
but not much account in this”—­who
went on playing loudly while he was trying to tell
us an “affecting incident” that occurred
near a small clump of trees shown on his panorama
of the Far West. The music stormed on-we could
see only lips and arms pathetically moving till the
piano suddenly ceased, and we heard-it was all we
heard “and, she fainted in Reginald’s arms.”
His tricks have been at tempted in many theaters,
but Artemus Ward was inimitable. And all the
time the man was dying. (Moneure D. Conway, Autobiography.)]—­who
had quickly become a favorite in London, had prepared
the public for American platform humor, while the daily
doings of this new American product, as reported by
the press, had aroused interest, or curiosity, to
a high pitch. On no occasion in his own country
had he won such a complete triumph. The papers
for a week devoted columns of space to appreciation
and editorial comment. The Daily News of October
17th published a column-and-a-half editorial on American
humor, with Mark Twain’s public appearance as
the general text. The Times referred to the continued
popularity of the lectures:

They can’t be said to have more
than whetted the public appetite, if we are to
take the fact which has been imparted to us, that the
holding capacity of the Hanover Square Rooms has
been inadequate to the demand made upon it every
night by Twain’s lecturing, as a criterion.
The last lecture of this too brief course was delivered
yesterday before an audience which crammed to discomfort
every part of the principal apartment of the Hanover
Square Rooms....

At the close of yesterday’s lecture Mark Twain
was so loudly applauded that he returned to the stage,
and, as soon as the audience gave him a chance of
being heard, he said, with much apparent emotion:

“Ladies and Gentlemen,—­I
won’t keep you one single moment in this suffocating
atmosphere. I simply wish to say that this is
the last lecture I shall have the honor to deliver
in London until I return from America, four weeks
from now. I only wish to say (here Mr. Clemens
faltered as if too much affected to proceed) I am very
grateful. I do not wish to appear pathetic,
but it is something magnificent for a stranger
to come to the metropolis of the world and be
received so handsomely as I have been. I simply
thank you.”

The Saturday Review devoted a page, and Once a Week,
under the head of “Cracking jokes,” gave
three pages, to praise of the literary and lecture
methods of the new American humorist. With the
promise of speedy return, he left London, gave the
lecture once in Liverpool, and with his party (October
21st) set sail for home.

In mid-Atlantic he remembered Dr. Brown, and wrote
him:

Page 287

We have plowed a long way over the sea,
and there’s twenty-two hundred miles of
restless water between us now, besides the railway
stretch. And yet you are so present with us,
so close to us, that a span and a whisper would
bridge the distance.

So it would seem that of all the many memories of
that eventful half-year, that of Dr. Brown was the
most present, the most tender.

XCII

FURTHER LONDON LECTURE TRIUMPHS

Orion Clemens records that he met “Sam and Livy”
on their arrival from England, November 2d, and that
the president of the Mercantile Library Association
sent up his card “four times,” in the hope
of getting a chance to propose a lecture engagement—­an
incident which impressed Orion deeply in its evidence
of his brother’s towering importance. Orion
himself was by this time engaged in various projects.
He was inventing a flying-machine, for one thing,
writing a Jules Verne story, reading proof on a New
York daily, and contemplating the lecture field.
This great blaze of international appreciation which
had come to the little boy who used to set type for
him in Hannibal, and wash up the forms and cry over
the dirty proof, made him gasp.

They went to see Booth in Hamlet [he says], and Booth
sent for Sam to come behind the scenes, and when Sam
proposed to add a part to Hamlet, the part of a bystander
who makes humorous modern comment on the situations
in the play, Booth laughed immoderately.

Proposing a sacrilege like that to Booth! To
what heights had this printer-pilot, miner-brother
not attained!—­[This idea of introducing
a new character in Hamlet was really attempted later
by Mark Twain, with the connivance of Joe Goodman
[of all men], sad to relate. So far as is known
it is the one stain on Goodman’s literary record.]

Clemens returned immediately to England—­the
following Saturday, in fact —­and was back
in London lecturing again after barely a month’s
absence. He gave the “Roughing It”
address, this time under the title of “Roughing
It on the Silver Frontier,” and if his audiences
were any less enthusiastic, or his houses less crowded
than before, the newspapers of that day have left
no record of it. It was the height of the season
now, and being free to do so, he threw himself into
the whirl of it, and for two months, beyond doubt,
was the most talked-of figure in London. The
Athenaeum Club made him a visiting member (an honor
considered next to knighthood); Punch quoted him;
societies banqueted him; his apartments, as before;
were besieged by callers. Afternoons one was likely
to find him in “Poets’ Corner” of
the Langham smoking-room, with a group of London and
American authors—­Reade, Collins, Miller,
and the others —­frankly rioting in his
bold fancies. Charles Warren Stoddard was in
London at the time, and acted as his secretary.
Stoddard was a gentle poet, a delightful fellow, and
Clemens was very fond of him. His only complaint
of Stoddard was that he did not laugh enough at his
humorous yarns. Clemens once said:

Page 288

“Dolby and I used to come in after the lecture,
or perhaps after being out to some dinner, and we
liked to sit down and talk it over and tell yarns,
and we expected Stoddard to laugh at them, but Stoddard
would lie there on the couch and snore. Otherwise,
as a secretary, he was perfect.”

The great Tichborne trial was in progress then, and
the spectacle of an illiterate impostor trying to
establish his claim as the rightful heir to a great
estate was highly diverting to Mark Twain.—­[In
a letter of this period he speaks of having attended
one of the Claimant’s “Evenings.”]
—­He wanted to preserve the evidence as future
literary material, and Stoddard day after day patiently
collected the news reports and neatly pasted them
into scrap-books, where they still rest, a complete
record of that now forgotten farce. The Tichborne
trial recalled to Mark Twain the claimant in the Lampton
family, who from time to time wrote him long letters,
urging him to join in the effort to establish his rights
to the earldom of Durham. This American claimant
was a distant cousin, who had “somehow gotten
hold of, or had fabricated a full set of documents.”